


Running Till Empty

by Corilyn_Winchester, MessOfEmotions (Corilyn_Winchester)



Category: House M.D.
Genre: AU Chase is Bipolar, Bipolar Disorder, Chase has a therapist, Chase is a mess but he Knows This, F/M, Gen, House has feelings, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Medical Inaccuracies, Medication, Robert Chase & Eric Foreman Friendship, This has Language, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:53:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 48,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24831145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corilyn_Winchester/pseuds/Corilyn_Winchester, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corilyn_Winchester/pseuds/MessOfEmotions
Summary: Robert Chase has bipolar disorder. He takes medication, he sees his therapist and occasionally his psychiatrist, and generally speaking he's dealing and has been dealing for a while now.It's when he's not dealing that it becomes an issue.
Relationships: Allison Cameron/Robert Chase, Greg House & James Wilson, Robert Chase & Eric Foreman
Comments: 32
Kudos: 85





	1. And So It Begins

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for coming! Leave a comment down below if you wish, I'm always down for feedback.

Robert Chase was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when he was 20 years old. He counts himself lucky, he’d recognized that something wasn’t right and was in the position to see someone about it, and after the campus health counselor refers him to the mental health counselor who in turn refers him to an actual psychiatrist after forcing him to fill out more surveys than he has the patience for, he gets the two words that make the pieces fall together. But only after an even longer two weeks worth of sessions that somehow make him feel even worse. He’s been depressed before, watching your alcoholic mother fall apart and eventually die a slow and painful death before your eyes has a tendency to do that to a person, so when he all of a sudden starts feeling that same existential dread again despite not having any serious life stressors lately, something pings off in his head and he takes the opportunity to get it checked out.

It turns out that having random bouts of intense insomnia followed by depressive symptoms has a name, which he figured it did, they’d covered the various depressive disorders in his intro psychology class, but he hasn't gotten to the real classes yet or felt the need to look it up on his own. Chase figures he’s lucky that he tends to fall on the more depressive side of things, once he knows what's happening and what to call them, he feels safe to state that his manias are relatively mild. A few days or weeks of sleeplessness, of easier aggravation and a somewhat frustrating inability to focus, and then it’ll fade away again and he’ll be in a low slump for a while before it all evens out again. It takes a few tries and at least one accidentally triggered mania, but they eventually figure out a medication regimen that works for him and it knocks the nearly monthly manias down to a handful a year at most. 

Eventually Chase begins to notice the signs before they become too bad and he learns what it takes to preemptively medicate himself. If he keeps up with his normal medication and feels the creepy crawly Wrongness of the swings before they get too bad, he’s realized that actually taking the Xanax he has for emergencies seems to help calm his brain down. By the time he takes the job at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital under Dr.House, he’s got it all down to a science and everything is set up for him to continue his prescriptions in this country. 

House, for all he’s world famous and Chase is beginning to see why, doesn’t seem to notice the mood swings, although Chase prides himself on keeping them invisible as best as he can. He doesn’t mention that Chase bounces his foot and chews on pens, that he sometimes acts like a child with an attention deficit. Chase figures it’s because House doesn’t actually care as long as he does his job and he’s more than willing to take that explanation at face value.

So, Robert Chase takes his medication and sees his psychiatrist once a month and tracks his cycles and makes every attempt possible to catch the manias before they hit, and he’s getting pretty good at it. Until he gets hit by the worst mania he’s had since med school and it becomes impossible to hide it from House anymore. Not that he was intentionally hiding it before, he was just keeping his private life private. 

________________________

It’s been almost four years since he’s messed up this spectacularly. The last time had been during his last month of medical school, right before their final residency selections and exams, and he’d ignored the signs of the impending mania as being just normal stress induced insomnia that the entire senior class had at the time. That was until he hadn’t slept in a week and was somehow not tired despite almost blacking out every time he stands up and his classmates have started to give him weird looks. 

That time he’d ended up in the Emergency Department of the university after nearly giving himself alcohol poisoning just trying to get some sleep before exams started. After the intake nurse had gotten his history out of him while he puked in a basin, it had been a pretty quick jump to ‘bipolar patient off their meds because of a manic episode’. It had taken a few weeks to truly level out after that one, but he’d at least been evened out enough to take his exams the next week. 

This time was different, and looking back on it Chase can see the warning signs a mile off. Unfortunately though, part of the reason why it's called a disorder, is that his brain occasionally tries to play tricks on him instead of just freaking out in its normal way. He’s been working in the Diagnostics Department for nearly six months when it happens, but he’s felt good for the last few months, which is not something he can say has been a common occurrence in his life since he was a teenager. But, he feels good regardless. Really good, better than he has in a very long time. 

That should have been his first clue that this maybe wasn’t his disorder calming down, but a manic episode starting.

He figures he’ll adjust his dosing, but keep it to himself, he’s a doctor and he knows what’ll be dangerous especially considering how long he’s been on the medications. Cutting down his Prozac seems to help and he feels clearer than he has in years. 

That should have been the next clue. But instead he ends up standing over the toilet contemplating flushing the bottle of Lithium that’s lived in his sock drawer for years.

Something tells him not to, but he does end up stepping down that as well, eventually by the time the mania truly sets in he’s completely off his maintenance medication. He’s loath to admit that he’s been using his emergency medication more recreationally than he ever has, but loading up on Xanax is the only way he’s found to sleep. Somehow though, he still feels better than he has in a long time. He’s clear and awake and despite the feeling of standing on the edge of a precipice, it’s somehow not concerning. It should be. And he knows that if he saw someone in the clinic who was telling him they were doing what he’s doing, he’d be referring them to the third floor for an evaluation in a heartbeat. 

Somehow he manages to keep it together enough at work to not be found out for an entire month, even his shrink just thinks he’s in a normal upswing when he has his regularly scheduled appointment, he tells him to keep a watch on it and Chase nods and agrees and does what he’s supposed to do. He doesn’t tell the psychiatrist that he’s off his medication and barely sleeping most nights. He feels amazing. Alive. 

And then it gets bad. He’s on edge and falling fast, like the moment the chair tips past where you have it balanced. It doesn’t take a genius to realize what he’s doing, especially not if they have a medical degree. Work nights are a constant cycle of the Xanax he has stockpiled and just not sleeping. Nights when he doesn’t have work in the morning are filled with finding a club and a warm body to grind against. Adderall makes the high better, and it’s not like he needs sleep anyways. 

It’s only after a particularly rough weekend with a one night stand that was a little overzealous with their affinity for ropes that House finally deems it necessary to bring it up. Chase will admit he’s more out of it than normal, even for recently, but he’s been doing his job. It’s not his fault that everyone else is moving at a crawl and he’s able to sprint between tasks without stopping. 

House has been giving him odd looks all day and Chase knows that it’s probably because his wrists are bruised to hell and he’s got bags under his eyes. He’s not exactly hungover, but he does feel off in a way that’s hard to explain. 

It eventually culminates in Chase snapping at Peterson, the department's resident gastroenterologist and getting pulled into House’s office once they all get sent their own ways. He’s pacing angrily before House has a chance to say anything. 

“What the hell is going on with you?” House picks up the oversized tennis ball and starts rolling it back and forth between his hands.

“Nothing. I’m doing my job aren’t I?” Chase snaps back, still pacing the office, unable to shake the burning energy in his body. 

“Something is going on, and if you don’t tell me you’re fired.” That makes him freeze for half a moment and he looks at his boss, knowing his eyes are betraying his fear and so much more. Hoping he can convey everything that’s Wrong without having to find the words. “Drugs? That’s my niche issue, no stealing.” 

“I…” Chase starts pacing again, clenching and unclenching his fingers. “I’m fine. Nothings going on. Hell I’m better than I’ve been in years.” He knows he’s in a manic episode, can at least admit that he might be on the edge of something bad. 

“Then you’ll submit to a tox-screen?” Chase scoffs and lets himself run his hands through his hair while he does a quick calculation in his head. A blood tox right now would definitely come back with amphetamines and benzodiazepine on it, however the alprazolam he has a valid script for, he’d just have to admit to it. 

“Why wouldn’t I? I’m not on drugs.” He was at the nightclub, but he always makes sure there’s sufficient time between when he does party and when he needs to be at work. 

“Then do you need to be on drugs?’ When House says it, it’s not an accusation like Chase is expecting. It’s a question and he freezes again, but can’t force eye contact this time. “That’s what I thought. What is it?”

“I…” He hesitates and pulls at his hair for a moment, lacing his fingers behind his neck. “Might be in a manic episode right now. Or at least close to it. Not sure.” Once he starts talking, it’s like the flood gates open and he can’t stop the words anymore. “Which is weird because I feel great, but not manic great. I can tell that, that’s easy to notice.” 

“You’ve been diagnosed bipolar?” At Chase’s frantic nod House sighs. “What meds?”

“Prozac and Lithium, Xanax as needed.” There’s no need to tell House he’s currently off all but the benzos, he’s still able to perform his job without issue. “I’m fine really. When it starts interfering with my job, then I’ll do something about it.” He picks up the speed at which he’s pacing, trying to outrun the frazzled energy that’s making its presence known. 

“When was the last time you slept?” House seems almost suspiciously calm, and Chase figures that he might be doing it to avoid having him freak out on him. He’s personally never been violent in his upswings, but he knows that some people are, so there is a risk involved in what House is trying to do right now. Chase laughs at the question.

“Few hours last night, insomnia is pretty bad right now but nothing out of the ordinary.” He’s lying, but hopefully his questionable state will cover it up. 

“I mean a full night's sleep. The whole six to eight hours that you know is recommended.” There’s emphasis on certain words, but like always when he gets like this it doesn’t seem to connect properly. The world had started to move far too slow weeks ago, and it hasn’t caught up yet. 

“Two or three days?” He knows that House can tell he’s lying, but in all reality he can’t remember. It’s been a month at least, if he’s not black out drunk and passing out instead of falling asleep he’s been averaging between three and four hours, which isn’t too horrid considering everything. 

“So at least a week, got it.” Chase shoots him a glare but keeps pacing. “You’re a diagnosed bipolar with severe enough presentation to be on Lithium, currently in a manic episode. There’s no way you’ve been sleeping.What’s the world feel like right now?” 

“Like you’re all doing twenty in a fifty and I keep trying to pass but everyone else on the road is also doing twenty.” He spits the analogy out as fast as he can, desperately trying to hold onto what he’s now realized is a complete facsimile of being stable. Once it’s been thrown in his face, the doctor inside of Chase won’t let him ignore the obvious manic state that he’s settled into. 

House puts the ball back and grabs his cane. “Come on, wasn’t kidding about the tox screen.” 

\-------------------------------------

The report shows exactly what he’s expecting it to, remnants of his weekend off and none of what it’s supposed to show aside from the benzos. Chase doesn’t think he’s ever seen House so silently mad as when he slams the file folder down on the conference room table, luckily he waits until Peterson leaves first. 

“You forgot to mention that you’re off your meds.” Chase looks down at the single sheet of paper and sighs, increasing the speed of his foot tapping. “Is this going to be a normal issue every few months?”

“No.” He bites out the one word. “I’m fine really. Stepped everything down safely, just leave it alone. Please.”

“Sorry no can do Wombat. See, you tested positive for amphetamines, which means I could fire you right now if you don’t give me a hell of a reason.” He can’t look up and make eye contact, and something is telling him to dig his fingernails into the still fresh bruises running up and down his arms. 

“It was just some Adderall at a party this past weekend.” He knows that House wants more though, and he figures his secret is out, he might as well tell him it all if he’s going to get fired anyways. “It...makes the high better.”

“You mean makes the mania worse?” House snags a chair with his cane and sinks into it. 

“No...honestly I’ve never hated the mania?” He makes it a question, like he can barely explain it himself. “Gets in the way sometimes yeah, but...do you have any idea how productive you can be when you just...don’t get tired?”

“Yeah, gets in the way because you go out and get the shit kicked out of you for the fun of it?” Again, he’s never been violent when he gets manic, and it's always been another thing he’s thankful for when it comes to his specific brand of bipolar disorder.

“That's not what it is.” He doesn’t really want to get into it right now, or possibly ever, especially with his boss but he adds a quick smirk and, “It’s just rough sex. Gotta make it fun somehow.” 

“I’m just going to forget you ever said that due to your current mental status. Call your shrink and get back on your meds.” House flips the drug test results back around so the folder is in front of him. “You’re an idiot.”

“Excuse me?” He suppresses the urge to flinch, having heard those three little words far too many times. 

“You are an idiot. Chase you’re a doctor...you know going off medication without the prescribing doctors instruction is incredibly idiotic. Especially when it comes to psych meds. So I’m going to ask you again, is this going to be a recurring issue?”

“No...this is only the third time I’ve gone off them, last time was worse though so maybe I’m getting better.” He laughs again, unable to keep the bubbling inside his chest. “Sorry, this is all just so...ridiculous.”

“Your right about that. Call your shrink. Now.” House kicks his good foot up onto the edge of the table and leans back in the chair, clearly stating that he’s going to wait until the phone call is made. 

“Can’t I call in the morning?” His next appointment is in a week or so, and it’ll be easier to just...explain it all then. Maybe he’ll level out a bit before then and it’ll make more sense. “It’s not like I really need to be on the mood stabilizers, I’m not even truly manic right now.”

“You stay on the depressed side of things?” Chase nods slowly, looking down at the table. “Then you are definitely calling right now since there’s no way to judge when this high is gonna end and you’re going to crash. Hard, considering that you’ve been mainlining party drugs and who knows what else for the last however long.”

Unfortunately, Chase knows that the older man has a point, and the Xanax he’d taken a few hours ago is still doing it’s job and keeping the paranoia at bay enough that he’s able to step back from the fact that this is him they’re talking about and look at it through the lense of medical professional. So he dials the phone. 

When all is said and done, he's been properly chastised by both his boss and his psychiatrist and told to go down to the hospital pharmacy with House, pick up the medications that are being called in since he’s an idiot who flushed his Lithium and Prozac this month after stepping off of them near the end of last month. He’s got an appointment for first thing tomorrow and strict instructions to call the doctor back immediately if he has any severe self destructive thoughts. Which, since his phone was on speaker, forces him to explain to House that he has a tendency to self harm if the manic episodes get too bad. And that has House leaning over and saying into the phone that the blond idiot is covered in bruises and maybe rope burns. 

Chase ends up taking the next few days off work and not leaving his bed because even the thought of moving is exhausting, come Monday he truly realizes how stupid he was this time when he goes to get dressed for work and has to drink a whole pot of coffee before he’s even moderately close to awake.

It takes a few weeks again this time, but he does even back out and catch that balance between swings that sometimes makes him feel like nothing is actually wrong with him. And House eventually stops watching him like he’s about to fall apart in the office again, but they’ve come to an agreement when it comes to the youngest fellows mental health issues, House won’t bring it up unless it begins to affect his work or if it seems to be affecting his ability to take care of himself. Chase thinks it's a decent balance to keep, and it makes him think twice the next time he almost stops taking his medications, since now he has someone else to answer instead of just himself and his own fucked up reasoning. 


	2. Lithium and Prozac

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a mention: This Chapter deals with Suicidal thoughts and behaviors that could be seen as self destructive/self harm. Please avoid if you need to.
> 
> Also: there's things in this chapter that are 'incorrect', for some of these, this was done on purpose as it is a later plot point. 
> 
> Thank you and please comment down below if you wish!!

The next time his disorder gets the best of him past its normal passive intrusions is when his father manages to pop back into his life with no warning. His father who doesn’t even know because Chase knows he would just ridicule him for being so weak. 

It’s that time that Foreman finds out, mostly because he finds Chase puking in the mens room by accident one morning during Rowan’s stay and gets it out of him that he’s hungover as all hell, but please don’t tell House because then he’ll make him call his shrink, at which point Chase clams up and pretends he didn’t say anything. 

“If you’re this hungover on a weekday man, you might want to see someone about it.” Foreman is aware that Chase has a familial history of alcoholism and just prays to the God he isn’t sure either of them believe in anymore, that that isn’t what's happening here. That he isn’t seeing the beginning of the end for Chase and his career. He might hate the intensivist for being a self absorbed rich kid prick, but he is a good doctor. 

“One time thing, promise.” He rinses his mouth out in the sink and spits a few times, coughing against the acid burns in his throat. “Knew throwing up would help so I stuck a finger down my throat.”

“That’s gross.” Foreman grimaces as Chase shrugs against the sink. “Should you even be here right now?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Don’t tell House please?” He looks up at the neurologist with pleading eyes and seems to try saying something before blowing out a breath of air and dropping his chin down to his chest. “If I tell you something, could you keep it a secret? Especially from Cameron?”

“Only if I’m allowed to tell House if it’s going to affect your job.” Chase lets out a laugh that sounds almost painful. 

“He already knows the gist of it. Probably already suspects what's happening this time.” Chase has no doubt that House already knows this is going to potentially trigger some type of swing, either upwards or downwards. 

“Then yeah, bro code right?” Chase laughs again, low and tight, if Foreman wasn’t standing there watching his shoulders move, he might have heard it as a sob. 

“I...think that my father being here...might have triggered some underlying issues.” He’d hoped for the depression, prayed for the mania to stay far away. Chase knew he could hide the depression, even if it got as far as hurting himself or at least wanting to. “There's the potential that I might be experiencing what's called a mixed episode, which isn’t exactly common for me.”

“Wait…” Foreman pauses, and Chase can almost hear the wheels turning in his head. “You’re bipolar?”

“Gonna hate me even more now?” He mumbles into his shirt sleeve where he’s still leaned over the sink.

“No...just, man that makes a lot of shit make sense.” Foreman whistles and claps him on the shoulder. “I have no idea what you’re going through right now, but if there’s anything I can do to help, tell me. And I won’t tell Cameron, this is your secret to keep.” Foreman vaguely wonders if them being doctors makes the next question in his head appropriate, but he asks anyway. “Type one or type two?”

“Two. Only had less than a handful of true manic episodes in my life.” He spits into the sink again before wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “And before you ask, yeah I’m on medication and most of the time it does a damn good job at keeping everything balanced, but for some reason my father's presence seems to have counteracted the mood stabilizer.” He’s already rationalized this all in his head and had this conversation with himself probably a hundred times in preparation for hopefully coming clean about the whole mess to Rowan at some point before he vanishes again.

“What medications?” So they are going to go the doctor route with this, part of Foreman is happy about that, being able to impersonalize this, instead of it being his coworker that he sees every day and never even noticed anything was off about aside from being a bit hyperactive. It dawns on Foreman that he might have been seeing the residual of dulled manic episodes as hyperactivity or an attention deficit. 

“Fluoxetine and Lithium Carbonate.” Chase doesn’t mention the Xanax though, Foreman doesn’t need to know that occasionally his manias will morph into anxiety and paranoia. 

“Damn, you’re on the real shit aren’t you?” They all have a working knowledge of psychiatric medications but Foreman will be the first to admit that it’s not his specialty so he never took the time to really memorize a lot of them. 

“You could say that I guess.” When Chase looks up at Foreman he seems a lot more put together than he did a few minutes ago and it reassures Foreman that this isn’t going to be a big deal. “Just don’t tell House that I might be in an episode alright? I’ve got an appointment with my psychiatrist next week, I should be fine until then.” 

“Why don’t you want him knowing?” Foreman figures he doesn’t want to deal with the incessant badgering that House is sure to start in on if he does know something is up. 

“He gets...weird. Watches me closer. Guess he’s worried that I’ll do what I did last year.” It was almost 8 months ago now and Chase has no intentions of going off his medication again anytime soon. Once a country was enough for him.

“What happened last year?” There’s a hint in his tone that lets Chase know he’s worried that it was something horrible. 

“Nothing happened, not really anyways. Just went off my meds because I got manic in a weird way and didn’t realize it until it was too late.” He can almost feel Foreman relaxing next to him. “One of the few true manic episodes I’ve ever had, but I’ve never had psychotic issues.” He feels the need to mention that before Foreman starts thinking that Chase see’s things that aren’t there out the corners of his eyes. “Solidly type two here.”

“I mean...if you have to have it, that’s the one you want right?” Foreman shrugs and Chase pushes himself to standing straight up. 

“Rather have nothing, but yeah...guess you’re right.” He runs his hands through his hair and racks them down his face. “Think I still look like a teenage girl trying to throw up her lunch?”

“Can’t even tell you puked.” And that might tell Foreman something he never wanted to see the signs of in the younger doctor, but he hides it in the revelation of Chase’s mental illness. He’s a doctor and he vows to not judge his coworker for it, but it doesn’t stop him from promising himself that he’ll keep half an eye on Chase when he seems to swing one way or the other more than is reasonably acceptable. 

Rowan Chase leaves and Robert Chase seems to be off for a few more days, not in any particular way, and if you didn’t know him, didn’t work with him everyday, you’d never notice. Foreman notices that his normal happy go lucky attitude might just be a mask, but he doesn’t tell anyone. He wouldn’t say he likes Chase as a friend, but he doesn’t hate him anymore. Not after meeting the kids father, it makes sense that he’s messed up if that was his more present parent. 

Foreman notices when Chase gets obscenely uncomfortable after that, he covers it up with snark, with a pompous attitude made all the more convincing by his stupid accent, but Foreman can see through the cracks now that he knows they exist. It definitely doesn’t help in trying to hate the rich white kid when Foreman finds him backed into a corner of the storage room next to diagnostics in the middle of a panic attack.

He doesn’t really know what to do in that situation, of course they all have training, they all know medically what to do, or at least what protocol says to do. But this isn’t their patient, this isn’t someone who came into the ER. This is his coworker, desperately trying to hold onto his pride by hiding in a storage room no one ever goes in, being found by chance just because they happened to run out of coffee filters at the exact wrong time. So he sits down next to him and after a few minutes of listening to Chase gasp for air and sob into his elbows with no signs of slowing down, Foreman gently asks “Is it alright if I touch you?” To which he sees the blond head bob up and down ever so slightly in response to.

Foreman squeezes his shoulder and he can feel the tension there, something triggered this, something set him off, but Foreman will have to figure that out later. Right now they need to deal with this. 

It’s a few minutes later when Chase chokes out “There’s Xanax in my bag.” Which means the intensivist doesn’t think he’s going to be able to calm this down anytime soon. They haven’t explicitly talked about Chase’s disorder, not since his father’s presence had set off the mixed episode a few weeks ago, but Foreman knew this was possible.

“Are you going to be okay if I leave to go get it?” Chase nods again, swiping an arm across his face and looking up for the first time since Foreman entered the room. His eyes are bloodshot and puffy red from the salt, and when Foreman looks closer he can see bags under Chase’s eyes as well, betraying the sleep deprivation they all suffer from but ignore.

When Foreman comes back, Chase has switched from crunched up in the corner to sitting with his back rod straight and staring at the shelving across from him, his breathing is uneven, and he’s biting his lip. It’s obvious he’s still not in a good place, and is hanging on by a thread, or maybe half of one Foreman thinks when he sees Chase blink back more tears and crunch his eyes shut.

“Here. I can tell House you’ve got food poisoning or something so you can go home?” Foreman doesn’t really have a clue as to what he’s supposed to do right now, and he still maintains that he doesn’t even like the guy so why is he offering to lie to their boss for him?

“No...Don’t.” He takes the messenger bag from Foreman with shaking hands. “Just I-if you. Fuck.” He bites his lip again, harder, and exhales shakily before continuing. “Could you cover me? Just for a few hours...so I can get this shit to calm down.”

“Yeah, yeah I can do that.” He doesn’t know how exactly, but he’ll figure it out.

A little over two hours later when Chase walks into the conference room like nothing happened Foreman gets to wondering exactly how many times he’s fallen apart in the weird storage room, and decides that's a conversation for another day.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

And then his dad dies, and none of them even know until six months after the fact. Foreman knows something is wrong, can tell it's particularly bad when Chase stops even trying to lie about being happy. But he doesn’t push, every man needs his privacy, and Foreman figures that maybe it's more so caused by his screw up basically killing a patient than anything else. Foreman knows that Cameron notices, but she seems to be leaving it alone too, which makes Foreman think they’ve already talked about it. Everyone knows they’re sleeping together.

All Foreman knows is that Chase is depressed, much more than he would be normally and even more so than he generally is when he seems to swing down more than usual. And he’s not hiding it as well as he thinks he is.

When it all comes out in the end, Foreman will do some quick math in his head and realize that Chase making the very stupid decision to sleep with Cameron when she was high on meth had to have been within weeks of his fathers passing. Foreman wonders if the death hit him like it would have someone who had a decent relationship with Rowan Chase, if his coworker had been depressed and grieving. Or if in true Chase fashion things had gone pear shaped and Chase had been dealing with a hypomanic episode during the time when he should have been booking a flight home for the funeral they all know he didn’t attend. Or if Chase had been spared that and he’d been able to process the death like anyone else would have. Foreman really hopes that Chase was able to sit down and grieve like a normal human about it, to get drunk and watch shitty movies and cry about the passing of his father and try to remember when times were good. (If they ever were, Foreman reminds himself solemnly.) 

\---------------------------------------

Chase, for all its worth, thinks he does pretty well dealing with the death of his only remaining parent. He doesn’t go off his medication, he doesn’t go into a self destructive manic episode, and the ever present anxiety isn’t much worse than it normally is. Yes, he’s depressed, but it could be worse. He’d rather be sad and randomly lose all of his energy to the point of barely being able to crawl out of bed in the morning than deal with the hypomanic energy that it could be. That’s what he keeps telling himself anyways.

It doesn’t take long for his shrink to catch on, especially not with his pending malpractice suit adding even more to his list of things he can’t deal with right now. Surprisingly enough, all that added block does is make his anxiety worse, but it doesn’t trigger a swing or even make the depression all that much worse, although Chase secretly thinks there isn’t much worse to get before he reaches Dead. There’s no risk in admitting to himself that he’s passively suicidal, it’s not that he wants to kill himself, but he doesn’t particularly want to be alive either. It’s after a particularly bad week when he tells his therapist that and gets himself in trouble for it and is sent to Putman’s office almost immediately. His therapist’s name is Kevin and he’s a middle aged guy who Chase thinks he had a decent relationship with, but when it comes to the real bad shit, when he’s Bad, that’s when the psychiatrist comes in. Chase tries to avoid having to see Putman more than his once monthly refill appointment and getting shuffled over when he tells Kevin he wants to go to sleep and not wake up but he’s not actively going to do anything to cause it sets his nerves on fire. 

He knows there’s something going on, but he’s stressed out and grieving and he figures he’s allowed to be a little more depressed than usual lately because of it. Kevin asks all the questions he has to, and Chase assures him that he isn’t a danger to himself right now, he’s just Tired. Kevin agrees that he’s got a lot going on that could be factors in the worsening depression, but he also convinces Chase that they need to do something now, to be proactive instead of reactive and risk him going fully suicidal or even just overtly self destructive. So Chase agrees to do an immediate medication evaluation and it doesn’t help his case that he has a complete and utter breakdown in Dr. Putman’s office, complete with crying while he tries to argue his side that he’s Fine.

He’s not fine. Chase knows it, Kevin knows it, Putman knows it. And Chase walks out of the office with an increased dosage of his antidepressants and a new prescription for Risperdal, which is supposed to help kick this whole thing in its ass. Putman tells him that he might be able to cycle back off of the antipsychotic after they get this episode under control. 

It’s three days later when he has his hearing and gets suspended for a week. He tells his coworkers that he spent the week partying and picking up girls and relaxing, using his unplanned vacation to its maximum benefit. In reality he spent it adjusting to his new medication and trying not to puke up everything he ate. It doesn’t help that he’s still just as depressed as he was a month ago, if a lot less anxious. Chase would even go as far as to say that day five of his seven day suspension is the worst he’s had in a very long time. He can accurately say that he hasn’t been as objectively suicidal as he is that day since he was a teenager and didn’t know what the hell was going on. Enough so that he’s thinking about what he has in his apartment that could do the trick and what note he’d leave. He doesn’t write the note and he knows that if he stays in his bed and just doesn’t move, he can’t hurt himself. So that’s what he does, despite knowing that if he downs all of his meds at once and lays back down, he’ll finally get to sleep until he isn’t tired anymore because he’ll never have to wake up again.

He rolls over and goes to sleep instead of making it permanent.

When he wakes up in the morning he doesn’t feel any better.

The next time he sees Kevin, Chase is very careful not to mention the suicidal ideations, knows exactly what will happen to him if he does, he just silently promises himself that it’ll get better. That it has to because it always does.


	3. The Girlfriend Clause

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for missing last weeks update and also for formatting, I am posting from my phone. If there are any glaring mistakes please let me know and I will edit accordingly.

He does eventually tell Cameron, but only because she happens to look in his medicine cabinet one the first few times she’s over at his apartment and comes back to sit on the couch with a look of pity on her face that morphs into compassion before she voices her concerns.  
“I didn’t know you were depressed.” So she found the Prozac but not the Lithium then. She wasn’t truly snooping then, he hides the bottle of Lithium still, but there’s no shame in a girl he has over seeing the Prozac. Too many people in the world are depressed for it to be a huge deal.  
“Only sometimes.” He answers instead, knowing that she deserves to know, but wanting none of the pity he knows the truth will bring. “Other times I get hypomanic.” His voice breaks slightly with the admission.  
“Oh.” And with that one syllable she leans into him harder on the couch and for the first time in a very long time, Chase feels truly grounded in the here and now. There’s no edge on the cliff today, he doesn’t have to fight the urge to fall or the fear of flying, knowing it’ll end at the bottom either way.  
Being with Cameron isn’t the magical end all be all happy love story that would make it into some midday lifetime movie. He’s not suddenly cured by being around her and loving her, but Chase does know that it helps to have someone around who will call him on his bullshit when he can’t see it. It doesn’t change the intensity of his swings, but having another person there to help him see the signs and prepare as necessary is nice. Except when he wants to melt into the floor and Allison becomes exhausting to be near.  
And having someone who he has to answer too when it’s just too fucking hard to get out of bed is good too, Chase supposes. Although he hasn’t had a depressive streak this intense since the early days of figuring out his medication, it’s always been a possibility though, so when he’s forcing himself up for the umpteenth day in a row feeling like he’s in a haze and just wanting to go back to sleep, he doesn’t think much of it.  
Somehow somewhere between everything, Chase has forgotten that crying in your shower for almost an hour and hyperventilating until you actually do need to find the inhaler you keep laying around because you triggered your mild underlying asthma, isn’t a good sign. He goes to sleep and wakes up somehow more exhausted the next morning, but he doesn’t want Allison’s pitiful face to meet him for coffee so he drags himself out of bed, forces himself to brush his teeth and gets on with his life. Alison doesn’t suspect anything and if she does, she keeps it to herself.

CAMERON

The first true mania that hits Chase after Cameron finds out, she isn’t even aware of it until it comes to a head. Sure, he’s been a little different lately, a little more willing to fall into bed than to sit still, a little more insomniac than he generally is, a bit hyper active. She’s not concerned about it, he’s like this sometimes, it happens. Cameron has seen it before, and now that she knows that the distinct personality change that occurs sometimes is due to his mental illness, she’s more willing to accept it.  
But then he comes home drunk and wide eyed and practically dancing through their living room (she’ll realize the next morning that he drove home in that state when she sees his car in the driveway, and the only thing that keeps her from screaming at him is that he’s still manic and it won’t do anything), that’s when she puts the dots together. So she shoves down the part of her that is ‘concerned girlfriend’ and goes with ‘concerned significant other who is also a medical professional’ and the next morning when he’s chugging down a cup of black coffee and bouncing his leg so hard it looks painful and she’s picking at her oatmeal, she asks him point blank.  
“You’re manic. Are you off your medication?” She’s never exactly prescribed to the idea that mental illness needs to be treated with pills, but when it comes to Robert in particular, he seems to have found a regiment that works to help correct the chemistry in his brain. However, that doesn’t mean she completely agrees with him being on medication for the rest of his life. There has to be other options.  
“I know, and no I’m not off them. Lithium and everything, still good to go.” He seems embarrassed by his behavior the night before,and Cameron wonders for a moment just how much he remembers of it. Knowing that sometimes people with bipolar disorder don’t have clear memories of their manias.”It happens sometimes, I can still do my job.”  
“Okay.” She answers, knowing not to question him right now, she’s not sure exactly what Robert will do in such a state.She’s not exactly scared, has never feared what his reactions would be to certain things, but she’s worried what it’ll do to his psyche to take away the one thing he has control over right now, to even just loosen the anchor he has set for himself. And, she thinks, he’s been diagnosed for nearly a decade, he can handle himself by now. Or at least he should be able to. She silently thinks that if he can’t handle himself he shouldn’t be in their profession.  
“Okay!” It’s a little too enthusiastic, a little bit loud, but it’s okay. She can handle it. What she can’t handle is when Robert walks out the door and to his car like it’s another day, completely ignoring the fact that he must have driven home drunk the night before. Cameron wonders if somewhere in his misfiring brain being drunk and manic at the same time cancels out. Wonders if he’s ever driven drunk before, wonders if this is common. And then the fear that he has his mother's illness lurking behind the curtain as well as his own sets in and Cameron has to settle herself before she gets in the shower to start her own morning routine. Robert is not his mother, he’s not an alcoholic, she has to remind herself.

It’s a few hours later when she finds herself concerned again. Robert is in surgery all morning, and despite her own anxiety about his state of mind, there hasn’t been any hint of issue from the surgical floor. Then she has a patient in the ER who is a self refered suicide risk, someone who’s severly depressed and doesn’t know what to do and has signs of self harm and she’s suddenly hit by the thought of a 20 year old Robert, falling apart from the stress of college and refering himself. She’s not entirely sure what happened before he got diagnosed, what his turning point was that made him turn himself in and finally seek help, but she can almost see it in this kid. Can almost see blond hair in place of the brown, can almost see Chase, manic as he was last night and this morning and all through the time that he didn’t sleep yesterday, in the Tired that this kid is exuding.  
She refers him up to the psych floor, and hands him a pocket pack of tissues because he can’t stop crying. And that’s okay, Cameron forces herself to not show anything on her face. She likes to think that she’s accepting of mental illness and always has been, especially now that she’s dating someone with a fairly impacting illness. So, she does what any concerned girlfriend would do and texts Chase, asking if he’ll make it for a late lunch. (She checked the schedule, he’s free after two this afternoon.)  
He responds back when she’s expecting him too, meaning she’s right and he’s kept to about normal time with today’s procedures. It settles her own anxiety and calms her fears he says he’ll be down around eleven, but has to be back upstairs afterwards (stating that his eleven o’clock was canceled due to an emergency situation) but he has a one o’clock now and he’s picking up someone elses post rounds.  
When she sees him he’s obviously still manic, still just a little too...bright...for the plane of existence that they live on. But it’s different, it’s not the same energy he had last night and this she knows she’s seen before. The days in diagnostics when he was a little twitchy, a little more argumentative, a little more willing to press his theory. Like the day he got fired, similar to how he was when his father showed up out of nowhere. Cameron comes to the staunch realization that she’s worked with a manic Chase before and never even realized he was anything more than hopped up on caffeine and sleep deprived. She never noticed that he hid it this well, she’d just assumed that his medication kept him from cycling very often.  
He doesn’t really eat his lunch and instead decides to spend his time pacing, Cameron tries her best to ignore it and just let everything run its course. She trusts him, trusts that last night he was telling the truth when he said he wasn’t off his meds and was taking them properly. She watches with her eyebrows pinched while he tries to pace off the energy and whatever else is going on inside his head right now.  
Something inside of her wants to cry and scream about the whole situation. She wishes Chase could just be normal (she still loves him even messed up) wishes he could understand what non-medicated normal brain chemistry could feel like.  
He’d said something once, when she had the sneaking suspicion that he was in a depressive episode but won’t admit it, not even to her. She can’t remember the exact words, but he’d been upset, nearly crying and huddled under the weighted blanket that only made an appearance once every few months, but he’d said ‘sometimes I think nothing is wrong with me and I’m just normally sad’. She’d cried in the shower about that, about how Robert could think that he wasn’t actually sick, he was just sad and misdiagnosed. She’d entertained the thought, and run the potentials through her head, but the math didn’t add up. He’d have had a worse reaction to the lithium he’s been on for years if he didn’t actually have a mood disorder.  
She’d even thought about reactions, about how maybe Robert was right, his diagnosis was wrong and it was his allergies that had done this. It was possible, psychosis could be a very rare side effect of some things in particularly susceptible individuals. But it didn’t add up, Robert wasn’t psychotic. He was bipolar and there was no way around it. She’d accept depression instead, if not for the fact that she’s seen him manic, that he’s told her about some of the times it got bad. There’s no argument about it, but that doesn’t mean Alison doesn’t wish there was.  
She feels the same, or at least tells herself that she does, when Robert has an asthma attack as when he has an episode. She wants to look at it as a medical condition, just as simple as his allergies or his lungs or anything they see in any of the clinic patients that don’t end up in the diagnostics department. She tries not to judge him for it, but sometimes? All she wants to do is scream.  
Scream because he doesn’t deserve this. Scream because he blames things on it. Scream because Robert knows that sometimes he’s an asshole, but if she confronts him about it, he’s bound to blame it on his disorder if he doesn’t want to take responsibility for it. Scream because she never knows if he’s lying or not.

But she is Alison Cameron, so she keeps her composure, even when she knows it is an episode and not an excuse, even though she knows that she’s justified to be pissed off and mad at the world and God and whoever else cursed her boyfriend with this. She is Alison Cameron so she swallows her pride, makes sure Robert is taking his medication, and lets it run its course while trying to convince him to leave the house and go to the gym and see the sun, even when she can tell from the look on his face that all he wants to do is hide under 20 pounds of blankets on the couch.


	4. Obligatory Flashback Sequence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It all started somewhere, and Chase knows that it started a long time ago. Just becuase he didn't know what it was then, doesn't mean nothing happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again, warning for this chapter: deals with suicidal thoughts and Self Harm.
> 
> This is a flashback chapter, in it Chase is about 14 years old and he's already having to deal with cycling, of course he has no idea thats what it is at the time. Don't worry, someone in one of the later chapters is definetly going to ask him when it started and it'll come up that he was having episodes long before he knew what they were.
> 
> Please let me know if theres any glaring formating issues, its about 3AM and I wrote this isntead of sleeping.

Melbourne, Aus (14 years old)

He wants to scream at the top of his lungs and tear his hair from his scalp at the frustration of it all. He’s not even entirely sure why he’s so frustrated today in particular, it hasn’t been much worse than most days, and mum is at least passed out on the couch this time instead of stumbling around the house and scaring the shit out of Eliza when she bounces off the walls. Robert settles for scratching at the scabs on his left arm and pacing until he doesn’t feel quite as jittery as he has all day. For some reason he isn’t tired, despite not sleeping very well for the last week or so, but he blames that mostly on being a teenager and being too scared to sleep because of mum and his sister. He feels like there’s bugs or electricity under his skin, it’s happened before and it bothers him every time, but it’s worse this time. 

He doesn’t realize it until it’s too late but he’s scratched too much at the scabs on his arm and he’s bleeding again. Robert sighs and shakes his hands out, nearly frantic with the frustration and energy and checks the living room to make sure his mum is still on the couch before locking himself in the bathroom to clean himself up before Eliza gets home from her friend's house. Part of him wants to cry, most of him wants to scream, and yet another part of him wants to just never have to worry about being the adult in the house ever again. He knows enough to know that he’s not supposed to want to die, but he can’t deny it in his own head. He doesn’t really want to be alive anymore, but he isn’t going to kill himself on purpose, he can’t leave his sister alone like that. 

\-------------------------------------

Dinner is done and Robert is washing the dishes when he hears footsteps behind him. It could have been worse as far as family dinners go, mum didn’t fall asleep on her plate or yell at him for anything. She’d seemed almost sober after her nap and Robert entertains the thought that maybe they could have another good day tomorrow. When he glances back it’s Eliza, all tiny six years old of her staring up at him. She’s so small, even compared to the other kids in her class and Robert half wonders if it’s his fault for not feeding her enough or making her drink milk more. 

“Robby...my tummy hurts.” They’d been dealing with this lately, and Robert has half a suspicion that he needs to call their dad and get Eliza checked for food allergies, especially considering that his own had appeared around her age. He can still remember how scared he was the first time and if he could keep her from experiencing that, he’d do everything in his power.

“How bad?” He dries his hands off and reaches up to the highest shelf he can reach for the medicine box. She shrugs and wraps her arms around her middle. “Open your mouth up for me.” When she does there’s no red spots and her tongue doesn’t look swollen, and Robert lets out a heavy sigh. “Is it like when you ate too much ice cream at Meg’s party?” 

“Mmh hmm.” She mumbles and looks down at her feet. 

“Just a regular tummy ache then...let me finish up the dishes and you go sit down in the living room with mum, let me know if it gets any worse, okay?” She nods and looks up, tilting her head and Robert sees her eyes settle on his left arm.

“You’re bleeding Robby...what happened?” He quickly shoves his sleeve down and tries to cover where the cuts have reopened from his scratching earlier.

“Nothing Liz, it’s fine.” He can hear himself speaking too fast, but she’s too little to notice, hopefully at least.

“Are you positive?” She almost stutters on the word, but Eliza is nothing if not intelligent. She might be tiny for her age, but her brain more than makes up for it.

“Of course I am, but don’t tell mum, okay?” He’s terrified of her reaction, and it’s been a good few days right now, he can’t jeopardize it by giving her the ammunition necessary to blow up on him. She nods and walks back toward the living room when he turns the water back on.

Robert knows he won’t be able to sleep tonight, not with the electricity under his skin or the renewed urge to add more cuts to his arm. With a quick glance around to make sure no one is watching, he hauls off a single hard punch to the top of his right thigh before starting back in on the dishes, hoping that the ache will keep his brain quiet long enough to do his homework.

\--------------------------

He doesn’t end up doing his homework that night, mostly because his mum sees the blood on his sleeve and slaps him for making a mess. She yells at him for what feels like hours but can’t be more than ten minutes, but it’s before Eliza falls asleep so he spends the next hour calming her down, and then the next two after that dealing with their mum. And then it's nearly 10 and he’s even more awake than he was earlier. He makes a short stop in the bathroom to add a handful more cuts to his arm and clean up the whole mess, bandaging the worst of them so they don’t bleed all over his shirt again, and then he takes off. Making sure one last time that mum is asleep in her room and Eliza is snuggled into her blankets, he sighs and locks the door behind him. 

The sun is creeping up past the horizon when he unlocks the door to let himself in the next morning. He didn’t sleep more than 20 minutes the whole night, and he’s got a bruise forming on his face from the fight he’d gotten into with Mark, but they’d made up after and Robert figures no one will question it too much. He’s a boy and boys fight, it’s not like if Eliza showed up at school with a bruised cheekbone. Robert figures he has just enough time to do his homework before waking his sister up and trying to get his mum up long enough to drink some coffee (preferably without her normal rum added to it but he’s not holding out hope). 

His arm itches, and there’s an ache in his cheekbone, but when he stretches out his jaw and the ache gets worse, the urge to scratch at his arm lessens. Robert wishes it would go away completely, but slicing at his arm is the only thing that seems to calm down the buzzing when he gets like this. He can tell it’s going to get bad soon, he always can. It’s like he can feel it following him and when he finally slows down, it’ll pounce like a big cat and try to smother him. He wonders if he could smother himself, it seems like it would be a lot of work to off himself that way. Pills would be so much easier, or just slicing his arms open deeper than he already has been.

\-------------------------------------

“Rob!” She yells and jogs up to him, sliding her arm into his elbow. “How was your weekend?”

“It could have been worse, that’s for sure.” Julie seems to notice the bruise then and uses her index finger to turn his jaw and raises her eyebrows at him. “I got into a fight with Mark, it’s fine. He’s fine and I’m fine and now we don’t have a problem.” 

“You sure?” He nods and then brushes his hair out of his face with his left hand. “Rob...why is there s bandage on your arm again?” He forgot that his sleeves were unbuttoned to let the breeze in. Julie knows about the cuts, but she’d made him promise to stop doing it.

“It’s the only thing that makes the world slow down, you know that.” They continue walking towards their first class, a thankfully shared homeroom. 

“Promise me you’ll try to stop? I know you promised before and it obviously didn’t mean anything but...for me?” He lets out a sigh and nods, a bit too fast, but then again he’s going at a million meters a second still, so he figures it’s allowed. “Have you thought about what I said?”

“I am not telling my father. He’ll tell me I’m just doing it for attention and that nothing is wrong with me, and he’ll be right. Nothing is wrong with me, I’m just faster at things and I hate waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.” That’s why he liked Julie so much, she was smart and pretty and she kept up with him most of the time, even when his brain did this and went a million times faster than it was supposed to. 

\--------------------------------------------------------

The Tired hits him sometime in the last period of class and he feels the remaining energy in his limbs fade out and a headache settles in behind his eyes. At some point on the walk home he starts crying and doesn’t realize it until his eyes get fuzzy and burn from the salt. It always happens like this, he gets so sleep deprived from the insomnia that he’ll just randomly start crying for a few days before he sleeps enough to catch up for what he’s lost. 

A few weeks pass and the Tired gets worse, but Robert just deals with it and drags himself out of bed and watches the world through a haze. He doesn’t cut himself anymore though, except one night when the buzzing in his brain gets to be too much and he thinks he’s going to die if he doesn’t do something about it. It’s a pretty rough day at school to start with, a test that he failed had come back graded, and he knows the school called his father's secretary about his falling scores.

When he gets home the smell of gin hits him at the door and he drops his bag so fast he swears at least one of his pens probably breaks. 

She’s sitting on the kitchen floor with the remnants of a gin bottle around her and a cup in her hand. Robert sighs, seeing that she’s unhurt, seeing that today isn’t what haunts his nightmares and grabs the broom from beside the fridge.

“Mum...let me clean it up.” He says, quietly and trying not to startle her, never knowing how she’ll react. Her head snaps around toward him and he can tell from her eyes that he’s in for it tonight.

“What? Think you have to take care of me or something? Well I’m the parent and you’re the child and you’ll be grateful for my money paying for you to go to that school of yours and stop treating me like a helpless kid!” So it’s one of those days, Robert sighs and reaches a hand out toward her, she’s not slurring, but the anger in her eyes is bright and close to the surface. These are the most dangerous types of days. 

“I am grateful, and I’m trying to show you that by cleaning up the kitchen floor.” If he lies just enough maybe she’ll believe him. Luckily it’s a monday, and Eliza has panio after school so he doesn’t have to go and pick her up for another hour.

“Oh really? Then get me a drink and leave me alone!” She yells from the floor and Robert stares at the ceiling for a moment, praying that she’ll let him help. He carefully steps around the broken glass and fills a mug with water from the sink and hands it to her. “You know this isn’t what I meant!”

“Well you broke the gin bottle, and if you aren’t careful you’ll cut yourself on the glass. Please let me clean it up before Liz gets home? I don’t want her to step on it.” He doesn’t care how mad she gets at him, as long as he can fix this before his sister gets home and potentially gets hurt by this. And it doesn’t help that he’s so Tired that he could curl up on the floor and fall asleep, spilled gin and broken glass be damned. 

“Well maybe I want to be like my son.” He freezes, heart seizing in his chest for a split second. “What, do you think I haven’t noticed?” She pulls herself up and Robert takes the opportunity to use his foot to slide some of the bigger pieces toward the center of the room. 

She slaps him before he looks back up again and then she’s grabbing a handful of his hair and using it to yank his head backwards. “You listen to me Robert! You will never do that to yourself again or I’ll make sure you can’t!” She’s yelling right into his face and he feels like gagging from the smell of alcohol on her breath. “You are a disgrace to me, and to my name. No child of mine will be known as that...abomination that mares his own skin. If I catch you again, I will end you. It would be better to have a dead child than one who does that!” He feels his heart rate speed up and the tears return to his eyes. 

“I’m sorry! I promise I won’t do it again.” She’s pulling at his hair so hard that he’s sure she’s yanking chunks out. 

“I wish I’d never had you! Ever since you were a baby….just disappointments.” She yanks him forward by the grip she has on his hair and throws him toward the floor. 

Robert gets his arms up in time, luckily, but he feels the broken glass bite into his skin. His shoulder and upper arm and a piece digs into his hip, exploding in pain and he hears himself cry out, and then hears his mother curse him one more time before her footsteps lead away. 

It takes a few minutes for him to get himself off the floor without making it all worse, and it takes even longer to pick the glass shards out of his skin. She's hit him before, thrown him before, but never like this. His eyes are watering as he pulls the shards free, wondering if any of them are bad enough to need stitches. He’s not crying from the pain though, it’s like there’s a film over his senses, almost a fog between him and the real world. He knows one thing though, she was right. He’s better off dead. And he knows how to give her what she wants, and get to sleep until he doesn’t have to wake up ever again.

\--------------------------------------------------

Eliza doesn’t notice anything is wrong, and when he cooks dinner the haze doesn’t go away, and the food tastes like mush. He can deal with it though, there’s nothing he can do about it, but he has a plan. He’s going to skip school tomorrow, and leave a message with his father's office that Eliza needs to be picked up and gather what he needs to do it. He’s going to use his mother's sleeping pills that she doesn’t touch, and write out his note and talk to Julie one last time and tell her that this isn’t her fault. He falls asleep in the tub that night, he isn’t sure why but he sat down in it at one point and didn’t have the energy to move afterwards.

He knows that Eliza can tell something is wrong with him in the morning, she hugs him just a little tighter than she normally does and buries her head in his chest when he drops her at the primary school, pretending to go off to the school next door when really he only intends to go back home and sneak in through his window to go back to sleep. 

Unfortunately for his plans, Julie sees him and she knows him too well, one look and she knows something is Wrong. He can’t tell her, and he needs to lie but he doesn’t have it in him. 

“What’s wrong Robert? And don’t lie to me, I can see it in your eyes.” He feels like he’s about to fall apart and when he looks up at her it’s almost too much. “Come on, let’s get out of the hallway somewhere private.” She pulls his arm and he follows her without complaint around to the backside of the library building, away from prying eyes. “What happened?”

“I...I can’t do this.” He mumbles and slides down the wall to the ground. “Julie, I can’t do this.” 

“Can’t do what?” She crouches down in front of him and runs her hand through his hair while he starts to hyperventilate. “You’re scaring me Robert...what’s going on?”

“I...I was going to-you know...do it.” Oddly enough even with her confronting him about it, he still wants to die, still wants to make his mother proud that she doesn’t have to worry about him anymore. “I’m going to kill myself.” He barely says it out loud, and the only way she can possibly hear it is that she’s sitting inches from his face. 

“What? Why would you….Robert look at me.” He barely looks up. “Why would you do that? I know that you hate your mum, and your father left, but you can’t leave.” She’s crying now, and he feels a pang of guilt for causing it.

“I’m so tired of the up and down, of dealing with her. Liz will be okay, I’ll call our father first, and then mum will be free to drink herself to death without worrying about either of us.” He says it in a monotone, but he can see where Julie is coming from. “Please don’t tell the office, they’ll stop me.”

“Fuck that, I’m going to stop you myself Robert. You don’t get to die, and you especially don’t get to kill yourself.” She’s holding his shoulders now, and he’s still breathing too fast and part of him wants to push her off of him. “How could you even...you can’t abandon Liz like that.”

“She’s little, she’ll be fine.” The gash on his hip from the glass is stinging and he can feel it open again. He’d wondered if that one in particular needed stitches. “And she’s smart...smarter than I’ll ever be, so she’ll understand it.” Julie is a little older than him, she’s 16 and Robert wishes that meant that she understood where he was coming from better.

“Jesus fuck Robert...that doesn’t mean...you still can’t do this.” He lets out a sob and presses his shoulders back into the brick wall, letting himself cry and hyperventilate. 

“How about-how,” he chokes out, but pauses to try and gasp in a breath. “I’ll make you a deal.”

“If it keeps you alive then I’ll take it.” He’s sobbing, gasping for air around a chest that feels like it’s trying to collapse. 

“I’ll wait a- week.” It’s not his own life that he’s worried about, but if his father doesn’t take Liz, there’s no way she could take care of herself and her mother. She shouldn’t have to either. For him, it’s penance for being a terrible child. He’s paying his debt. “One week….if I-I still wanna die, you let me do it.”

She doesn’t say yes or no, doesn’t agree to his terms, but she wraps her arms around him and lets him cry until his eyes are red and puffy. Lets him fall apart and ruin her perfectly ironed button up with his tears and his grasping fingers. 

\---------------------

He makes it the week, and by then he’s still off, still doesn’t exactly want to be alive, but he’s not actively thinking about his plan anymore, and he knows that he has to stay alive for Liz, and he has to pay his dues for being such a pain in the ass. Julie looks relieved when he tells her, and he promises to never worry her like that again. 

They last another 4 months before they break up, but Robert sees it coming weeks in advance. He gets with some of the older boys when it happens, and he gets so wasted that he doesn't make it home until the next morning. He learns a valuable lesson that day though, drugs and booze make his brain quiet down. He swears that he’ll only do it when he has to, when it gets to be too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a side note...yes his self harm did cause scars and this does come up in a later chapter I already have written.
> 
> This chapter just kind of happened, it wasn't part of the original write up at all, so sorry for any continuity errors.


	5. It All Falls Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It gets worse before it gets better, but then again Robert still doesn't even really know whats going on at this point, he's just hoping he can make it through everything alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another flashback scene, sorry but it had to happen.

Robert is about ready to scream his head off when he hears the thump. It’s just been one of those days, when his body feels like electricity and mum is being an angry drunk and Liz needs help with homework and he can’t do all of it. He’d call Julie to listen to his problems, but they broke up last month. Jumping out of bed and standing as still as possible to see if there’s any more noise from the bathroom, Robert tries not to breath. Tries not to let his heart rate skyrocket and the pounding to fill his ears and block out the sounds he’s desperately listening for. He hears nothing and quietly goes to check, unable to push down the fear that IT finally happened. And it’s not like he’s going to be able to sleep tonight anyways.

He finds her on the floor in a puddle of vomit. Luckily he did actually learn something all the times she locked him in the study at his father's house and he rolls her to check if she’s breathing. She is, but it’s slow and uneven and when he checks her pulse it’s erratic, or at least he thinks it is. It definitely doesn’t feel right. She throws up again and Robert props her on her side as fast as he can, he knows that he has to to keep her from choking on the vomit. 

Once she’s done and he’s sure she won’t roll back over he uses a pillow from the couch to prop her head up and stares at the ground for what feels like an eternity before he decides to call Triple Zero. His hands shake and his voice breaks as he tells the operator what’s going on and the address. When they hang up he takes another look at his mother on the floor and goes to put on jeans and trainers, waking Eliza up and having her get dressed, but he tells her to stay in her room, she shouldn’t see this. He throws a sweatshirt on to make sure no one sees his arm (it’s been a bad week).

When the ambulance shows up they ask him where their father is and Robert says he can call him, the medic asks if they have a ride to get to the hospital and Robert stares at his feet for another eternity and then shakes his head. It’s not the first time he’s had to call Triple Zero, it’s the third this year alone. Last was when mum had slipped in the bathroom and hit her head. She’d been bleeding all over the place and he’d been more annoyed than anything. Blood stains were the hardest kind to get out. 

The medic says Eliza and him can ride in the ambulance as long as they stay out of the way and Robert makes sure Liz gets seatbelted into the front before he finds a corner he’s not in the way from in the back. He can’t help that his brain is still spinning out of control and he’s always been curious. 

“What’s the IV of?” He knows one bag is saline, has seen it enough times, and he knows enough to know that the other bag isn’t Benadryl or a potassium solution. 

“Thiamine and glucose solution with saline.” Robert nods and absently picks at his nails for a minute before looking around again. 

“What’s the craziest call you’ve been on?” He’s reading all the labels on the cabinets and ticking them off on his fingers. It’s the only thing that seems to help when he can’t indulge in his little dirty habit. 

“Well...” the medic gives him a weird look but Robert can’t tell why. “Probably this one guy who was building a table and put a nail straight through his...well you know?” The medic, his name tag says Johnson, winces and Robert shifts uncomfortably in the seat, understanding what Johnson is implying. His mother is still unconscious and the oxygen mask they’ve placed on her is fogging and clearing in uneven bursts. 

“Ouch.” He whistles and goes back to reading the labels, sees Johnson give him another weird look from across the ambulance. “It’s kind of funny.” He starts laughing, not really meaning to. But that’s just something that happens when he’s like this. “Johnson had to deal with a guy who nailed his Johnson.” He’s laughing and can’t stop for far longer than is acceptable. The medic is giving him a weird look when he finally stops. “Sorry.” He says and looks back down at his feet, wanting nothing more than to slam his fist into his thigh but knowing he can’t with someone else watching. It’s not acceptable. 

“You alright kid?” Robert nods, but even he can tell it’s too fast. Nearly frantic. 

“I’m fine. Always like this.” That’s a lie but he also knows that he’s not supposed to be the way that he is. If he’s always like this then he’s just hyperactive, not fucked up. “What’s going to happen at the hospital this time? I know she’s worse now.” He’d noticed they yellow in her eyes the last few months. “She’s jaundiced and her liver is failing and her heartbeat was...weird.” 

“It’s called Bradycardia. When the heart beats too slow.” He nods again, knowing it’s still too fast but unable to slow it down. He laughs again. 

“Sorry I just...I’m fast and her heart is slow. Fast is tachycardia right?” He knows it from the times he’s had allergic reactions. 

“Yeah it is. You wanna be a doctor when you get older?” Robert shakes his head ‘no’ violently. 

“No. Definitely no. I don’t know what I want to be but I will Not be a doctor .” He can’t imagine being what his father is. 

“Problem with blood? Little bit squeamish?” Robert shakes his head again and Johnson raises an eyebrow. 

“I don’t like Emergency Departments.” He really doesn’t, there’s memories of not being able to breath and feeling like he’s dying attached to Emergency Departments. “I’ve got bad allergies to certain foods, and I always end up at the Emergency Department when I eat the wrong thing.” And then he can’t breath right for the next week but no one seems to ever care about that. 

“That makes sense. It’s not bad to be afraid of things that scare you even if they aren’t happening right then. “ Robert nods, he’d read that in one of the books in his fathers study, and he’d looked up what being sad and crying all the time meant in another. He knows he’s messed up. 

“Yeah...I guess.” He looks back down and tries to steady his foot from its incessant tapping. “I feel like I’m on epinephrine.” He whispers, unable to fully admit it but desperate for someone to understand. He feels like when he gets the shot that makes him able to breath again after eating strawberries but he has to tell someone.

“It’s normal to be worried about you mum. When we get to the hospital, I’ll find you a telephone and we’ll call your father okay?” Johnson looks at him and Robert can barely make eye contact. 

“That’s not what I mean...I feel like I’m on it all the time?” He doesn’t need to tell the medic about when he’s not hyper, that’s just when he’s normal and not terrified and doesn’t want to slice his arms to shreds just to quiet his brain. 

“Okay...how about when we call your father I talk to him? And I’ll tell him what you told me? Maybe you just need help too?” Robert knows what’s coming next and he rubs at his arm, starts tapping his foot again and desperately tries to count the cabinet labels to slow down his brain. “You worry a lot don’t you?” 

“I mean...yeah? I watch out for mum and call Triple Zero if I have to...and I make sure Liz is taken care of. I have to worry or not everything will get done.” He knows it’s hurting his scores, his father called last week to yell at him for it, Eliza’s are still acceptable but his own grades have fallen since mum got really bad. Since she started using him as a punching bag and his own brain started betraying him. 

“Your heart ever feel like it’s going to explode? Worried everyone is going to die?” He nods frantically, Johnson hit it right on the head. “That’s called anxiety kid, there’s things to help that.” Robert looks up and he can tell they’re pulling into the hospital bc the lights turn off and Johnson stands up to hand the gurney off. “Tell you what, once we get inside, we find a phone and I call your father and we figure this out, your mum gets the help she needs and you get what you need?” 

“Okay...thanks.” Usually Julie would help him, would hug him while he hyperventilates but all Robert can think of is getting Eliza somewhere safe but he keeps seeing her get run over by a car or having the same energy he has. When it’s too much to deal with and he just prays it would just Stop. He wants to call Julie but he can’t, they’re over. 

It takes another 22 minutes before the medic comes finds him and by then Robert has crunched himself up in a corner of the bathroom and cried until he couldn’t breath, washed his face off and made it back to the curtained off area where his mum is. Eliza is asleep in the chair in the corner and Robert is again happy he made her braid her hair so it’s not a mess. Mum is still unconscious and he knows from his own visits to the ED that her heart rate is still wrong, since he knows that pulse and respiration are what they’re always worried about with him. 

“Hey kid, lets go call your father yeah?” Robert nods, makes sure Eliza is still asleep and follows the medic out of the curtained area. 

“Dr. Rowan Chase.” His father answers sleepily. 

“Father...it’s Robert. We’re at the A and E...the medic wants to talk to you.” He holds the phone up to Johnson and crosses his arms, allowing his foot to tap incessantly. Trying to get rid of the urge to slam his fist into his leg since he doesn’t have a knife and his arm is itchy enough as it is. 

When the medic is done he hangs up and looks over at Robert. “He’s on his way, and he gave me permission to help you out a little bit. Did you have a panic attack while I was doing the paperwork?” 

“I don’t know? Maybe...I couldn’t-I couldn’t breath and I was really scared and I was crying but it went away.” Robert can feel the sparks in his brain again and just wants to be left alone or be able to go find the older kids again and drink until he calms down, but maybe that’s what mum has been doing. He feels okay right now. “I’m okay now though.” He knows he’s not normal. 

“Your father gave me permission to get you a dose of an anti-anxiety medication before he arrived, do you think that would help?” Robert shrugs, about to argue his point but terrified of what will happen this time if he lets this energy run it’s coarse.

“I don’t know...maybe.” He wants it all to stop. The world is going so slow and he’s so fast and all he wants is it all to stop. He starts hyperventilating again, knows it from the look on Johnson’s face. 

“Okay...hey look at me. Breath kid. Obviously something is wrong, I’m going to go tell a nurse and she’s going to get the meds for you and I won’t leave until you feel better okay?” Robert nods, feeling like he’s shrinking into himself. He just wants this all to stop. “I’m going to go to the pharmacy and get you a dose of Lorazepam, it’s going to calm you down and hopefully between now and when your father arrives it will keep you from having any more panic attacks. Is that okay with you?” Robert nods frantically...if there’s something that will stop the racing and energy he’ll take it. 

“Please.” Johnson nods and Robert looks at him, the world fuzzy through tear filled eyes.

When his father arrives Robert has calmed down and he feels vaguely floaty, or at least more detached than he normally does when he’s like this. 

“Robert.” He hears the voice of his nightmares. As much as mum might throw him around, at least she’s drunk when she does it. Father goes for it sober. “Robert I’m done playing get up.” He opens his eyes. 

“Sorry I fell asleep.” He figures apologizing will be best.

“Don’t apologize, the medic was forced to drug you since you were acting like a child and unable to control yourself.” Robert wipes the sleep out of his eyes and looks down at the floor. “Now, explain. What occurred and why did you embarrass me and call Triple Zero?” 

“Mum...” Robert takes a breath, remembers the medical terms and settles himself to reiterate the circumstances. He’s surprised by how easy it is to take a breath and settle himself. “Mum was unconscious and aspirating. When I checked, she was tachycardic and exhibiting bradypnea. I called Triple Zero after moving her into the recovery position since I don’t have any medical training past life guard certification.” Which he’d only gotten because his father insisted on sending him to camp every summer. 

“That all is acceptable, but why did the medic tell me you were exhibiting signs of a panic attack and request to dose you with Ativan?” His father has his hands on his hips and his lips are pursed, a quick glance tells him both his mother and Eliza are still asleep. 

“Because something is wrong with me.” He whispers. “Something is wrong with me and sometimes I want to die, but not right now? Right now I just want to run and run and I pray to God that it all stops.” He starts crying. The Ativan slowed his brain and heart down but apparently it didn’t help with his emotions. 

“That’s called being a teenager Robert, calm down before you wake your sister. I will not have this nonsense in my family.” His father sits down on the edge of the bed and runs his fingers through his mum’s hair. “Now explain to me, how this happened?” 

Robert explains it all, how it was a bad week to start with and he’s been trying his hardest and things slipped through the tracks. How his mum had been mildly jaundiced for at least weeks if not months now. How he’s been alternating between unable to sleep and sleeping for entire days straight, how he can’t take care of both his mum and baby sister when his own brain is fighting him. By the end he’s crying and his father is biting his lip and tutting and crossing his arms and Robert is sobbing and trying to slow his heart down because he can feel it skyrocketing again. 

“You’ll be getting evaluated while your mother is under treatment. Meanwhile both your sister and you will be staying with me, once your mother is released I believe we can return to our previous....arrangement.” He’s got his arms crossed and Robert can almost hope for normalcy. 

“Evaluated for what?” He might know something is wrong but he doesn’t want a label attached to him for life. That’ll take away his back up plan of joining the army and leaving Melbourne forever. 

“Whatever the hell is going on with you. One of my coworkers saw you fall apart in the men’s room and I’d be remiss if I didn’t do anything about it.” 

—————————————————

By the end of the week Robert has a diagnosis of situational anxiety, and a few Ativan stashed away for when it gets too bad, the psychiatrist they make him talk to doesn’t make it a big deal. Robert figures that’s mostly because he lies his ass off, but then again if he didn’t it would be a thousand times worse. If he’d admitted to slicing at his arms when the psychiatrist asked if he’d ever thought about hurting himself he’d have been labeled and locked up and his father shamed. So he adamantly denied any urges and wondered about how to cover up the scars. Someone was sure to notice what they were eventually but there was no use until he was done accepting the urge once and for all.

His mum on the other hand had been told she had 6 months, maybe, if she didn’t stop drinking and was placed in rehab. 

-/—————/-/-///:/———

  
  


She was dead 5 months later, just three months after she was released from rehab and by some cruel stroke of fate it’s the same ambulance crew when he calls Triple Zero again and when Johnson looks at him with pity In his eyes, Robert shrugs and says “I took an Ativan earlier”. It was his last one but he figures he’ll be okay without them. Now that mum is gone he just feels numb and all he wants is to sleep forever and maybe never wake up. 

His mother died, he thinks he’s allowed to want to join her.


	6. The Crash After the Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chase just wishes all of this would go away, his girlfriend wishes he could try a different method. Foreman needs him to work and honestly? All he wants is to be able to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a question to anyone still reading this fic: would you like more flashback chapters or more in the ‘present’? There’s some of each still written and I had always planned on this fic being a bit awkward in the time frame if that makes any sense at all.
> 
> Also I’m terribly sorry that updates have been sporadic, I’ve been having a really hard time sitting down and actually writing lately. 
> 
> Again, this was written on my phone in about 2 hours so apologies for any formating or continuity issues.

Present day/ Season 4

Cameron is awoken by the sound of the shower running and oddly enough, music. From what she can make out of it, it’s the newest Fall Out Boy album. Rolling over she glances at the clock, sitting up as she realizes it’s only 2am. There’s two possible explanations that her half asleep brain comes up with, the first is that Robert is manic and unable to sleep, the second is that the clock is wrong and it’s really 7:00 and he’s getting ready for work. 

She’d bet a whole paycheck on it being the first option. Rubbing sleep from her eyes and finding her glasses, she pads over to the bathroom. 

Robert is scrubbing at the tub with a sponge and nodding his head to the music. She can see his iPod plugged into the speaker dock on the counter and raises her eyebrow at him. 

“You having fun?” It could be worse, she thinks, he could be out getting drunk. 

“Well...I knew I wasn’t going to sleep and figured I should do something productive.” He keeps rhythmically cleaning the tub and Cameron notices that he looks somewhat scared. 

“Fair enough...you alright?” She tries not to change her tone, knowing that it frustrates Robert when she does so. 

“Yes Allison, I’m perfectly fine. No I’m not off of my medication, no I’m not going to have a panic attack, no I’m not going to hurt myself to get my brain to slow the fuck down.” He snaps at her, seems to realize what he did and slumps back against the wall. “Sorry. I’m just...frustrated.” 

“I forgive you, I’m going back to bed.” There's something about him that seems more off than she was expecting to find. “Why are you cleaning the bathroom?” 

“I just-“ he bites his lip and looks down at the tiles, foot tapping wildly. “It’s repetitive and productive and I need to burn off energy so…here we are. I’ll try to sleep after I finish the bathroom.” Robert hesitates before continuing, “I’m trying to not do stupid shit alright? And just...I’m frustrated as hell and there nothing I can do about it.” 

“Are you...you’re scared aren’t you?” Now that she’s realized it she can see it in his eyes. He looks terrified. 

“I can tell that I’m going to crash soon.” He nearly whispers it, reaching behind him and turning off the music. “It’s right on the edge of my brain.” His voice almost breaks and he seems to shake himself. “It’s fine. I’m fine, life’s great. Just go back to bed.” 

“You don’t have to crash though, do you?” She leans harder against the door frame and watches her boyfriend carefully. 

“Always have….always will.” He’s back to tapping his foot so much it looks painful and she can almost tell he wants to pace. 

“Well...if you know it’s coming...you’ve got anxiety medication right? Could you catch it before it got too bad?” She knows that he’s tried that before, but Allison has no idea when he stopped trying to kill off the heightened emotions. 

“It’s not that simple...I’ll crash and go depressive, which honestly might just be my standard state at this point since I can’t remember the last time I was happy when I wasn’t manic.” He’s talking too fast, at least for her 2am brain to really comprehend. “And then it’ll level out and at least I won’t want to not wake up, and then it’ll happen all over again. It’s exhausting Alison, but there’s no avoiding it.” He sounds annoyed, like he just wants to go back to scrubbing at the tub and listing to his music. 

“Sorry…just trying to help. Is there anything that might help avoid the crash?” She’s seen him crash before, and while sometimes it’s just a few days of exhaustion and irritation, there’s the potential of it being horrible. Last time he’d crashed it had been bad, really bad. Bad enough that he’d given in to the tendencies she knows he tries very hard to ignore. She settles herself with a deep breath and looks at the situation from a medical standpoint. “If it’s as bad as last time...please tell me or someone before you hurt yourself.” 

“It’s not like I mean to Allison, it just happens, but...I’ll try.” He goes back to scrubbing with the sponge he’d set on the bathtub edge. “I’ll call my shrink in the morning...I’m going to tell you something.” He always phrases things like that when he thinks she’ll freak out. 

She nods and slides down the door to sit down, putting her fingers in his hair. “Okay.” 

“Risperdal...might help. I’ll ask tomorrow, I’ve been on it before when I was...really bad.” He shakes himself again but keeps scrubbing almost frantically. “I just...the side effects suck.” He wants to tell her that it made him horrendously suicidal, but he hadn’t slept for 27 hours in the space of 2 days, and he’d known he didn’t actually want to die, he’d just wanted his brain to stop being stupid. He figures it’s a trade off. 

“That’s an antipsychotic isn’t it?” He nods and pulls free of her fingers. “I’m not judging, if it helps then it helps.”

“Go back to bed, I’m not going to end up sleeping and the living room is a freaking disaster.” 

“Okay.” They’d both been so busy the last two weeks that it’s no wonder she didn’t notice the episode starting, she’s gotten pretty good at seeing the signs now and she mentally berates herself for letting it get this far. 

———————————————————-

For all it’s worth, Chase really does not want to be on Risperdal again. He hated how it had made him feel, hated how much he’d sincerely wanted to die while he’d been taking it, but he’d been able to go a full day without sobbing his eyes out and having a full blown panic attack in the bathroom. 

He does however call Kevin in the morning and explain that he’s as stereotypically hypomanic as he gets and he’s terrified of what will happen within a few days when the inevitable crash occurs. Kevin is just concerned that he’s still cycling as often as he is while on medication and they schedule Chase to come in that afternoon. He doesn’t have any surgeries scheduled and when he explains to his supervisor that he has a medical appointment that he needs to go to, it’s easy to get the time off. 

The antipsychotic is recommended but Robert, for once in his life, decides to say something before regretting it. They take a long look at his history, Kevin has him fill out a few surveys and the whole time Robert is just trying to pace off the intense energy that’s still trying to burst out of his chest. It’s a longer appointment than he normally has, but by the end he’s talked to Dr. Putman and it’s been decided that his diagnosis is officially changing to ‘rapid cycling bipolar 2’ and they’ve upped his Lithium dosage and he’s on Ativan daily until further notice. 

If after a few months he’s still having problems to the degree he has been recently, Putman wants to add a different antipsychotic and maybe work some other stuff around. Robert just hopes the new changes keep the impending crash from being too hard. 

It’s two days later when he feels it happen, like a switch in his head. He sleeps for 10 hours and then forces himself up and into the shower. There’s a fog over his brain, but it’s been worse before. 

——————————————-

Cameron corners him the day after he crashes and makes him eat lunch, which later he’ll be thankful for when he realizes he was about to take his meds on an empty stomach. 

“Added a rapid cycling modifier and I’m on Ativan now.” He mumbles, knowing that he probably should have told her when it happened instead of days later, but in his defense the brain fog has settled in to stay and he’d almost locked his keys in his apartment that morning due to it. It was taking all the focus he had just to make it through the day without making it obvious something was wrong. 

“Well...that’s not actually surprising.” She seems to think for a minute. “You know I’ve been looking up studies lately...I know it’s not something you’d normally be into but...have you thought of alternatives?” 

“To what?” He’s picking at his salad with his fork and Alison sighs heavily. 

“To... you know...the Lithium and the Prozac and cycling? I read this one article about a study they did involving magnesium and Omega-3s...it had good results.” He lets her finish, but she can tell by his expression that he thinks it’s ridiculous. 

“Cameron...that shit doesn’t work. Not for me anyways, don’t you think I’ve tried?” He looks so tired, and suddenly she seems to realize that the crash happened while she wasn’t looking. 

“Okay, sorry for suggesting it.” She’s annoyed with him, annoyed that he won’t even entertain the thought. “Just thought that maybe you wanted an alternative with less side effects.” 

“You want to talk about side effects?” He puts his fork down. “Side effects suck ass, but I deal with them so I don’t swing between thinking everything is great and wanting to kill myself. And sorry if I’d rather deal with being nauseous, or tired all the damn time, or irritable.” 

“But you swing that much anyways?” She just wants this to be over for him, wants Robert to not have to deal with either the side effects or the cycles. 

“Not as much as I could be, or as intensely.” He looks around, as if to make sure they’re still alone. “I’m going to tell you something.” He takes a deep breath and runs a hand over his tired face, looking back up and waiting for Alison to nod. “Look Alison....it was a lot worse. Before, it was a lot worse, and I’m not exaggerating. It took me a really long time to be able to admit something was wrong, and even with how bad it still gets? This is better.” He’s rambling, and he hasn’t really told her anything that she didn’t already know, but she appreciates that he’s not completely locking down into himself. Not yet at least. 

————————-

_ Chase looks like hell. _ Foreman thinks when he rounds the corner to the surgical desk and sees his prior coworker tapping a pen on a chart. His hair is a mess and there’s bags under his eyes, and the nearly constant movement that seems to follow the blonde is still. He’s not rocking back and forth, or chewing on his lip or a pen, he’s not even tapping his foot. 

Foreman almost feels bad about asking him to do this surgery for House when he’s obviously not 100%. That doesn’t stop him from walking up and leaning on the counter next to Chase. 

“You busy this afternoon? House needs a surgeon.” He closes the folder and looks up at Foreman, rolling his eyes. “You okay?” 

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine. Just…” he motions to the side of his head and rolls his eyes. “And no, I’m not busy this afternoon. What’s the procedure?” 

“Gall stones.” Chase nods and slides the folder into the box on the nurses station. 

“Yeah, I can do it. Easy enough.” Foreman takes a long look at Chase and then tilts his head toward the stairwell. “Sure.” 

Chase follows him to the stairwell door and they make their way to the platform, and the mask he seems to have had in place falls as he slumps onto one of the stairs. 

“Are you okay?” His tone isn’t like Cameron’s though, he sounds more exasperated than anything. 

“I’m fine.” It’s mechanically, and obviously a lie, but Foreman doesn’t call him on it. “New meds.” He adds after a moment and runs a hand over his face. “New meds and I’m exhausted and crashed out and low key kind of don’t want to be alive but don’t tell Allison that?” He looks up at Foreman through the hair that’s fallen into his face. 

“You suicidal?” Foreman has to ask, hates that he’s had to ask before and will probably have to ask again eventually. 

Chase shakes his head no. “Just kind of want to sleep for like...a year.” He shrugs and leans against the wall. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine to do the procedure.” 

“If there’s anything I don’t question about you it’s your medical ability.” He catches a raised eyebrow from that. “State of mind, sexuality, sanity for staying with Cameron, these things I question.” 

“And let me guess...you still hate me and don’t think we could ever be friends?” He looks down at his feet, and Foreman suppresses a chuckle at noticing he’s wearing converse sneakers.

“Hey, you said it not me.” Foreman leans up against the other wall. “Seriously though man, are you going to be alright? You know how frustrating it is to find someone in the surgical department who will go along with House’s insane ideas.” 

“I said I’d be okay and I meant it. It’s mostly that I’m drowsy as fuck from the anxiety meds I got put on. It’ll even out in an hour or so, just have to get through the fuzz first.” He wishes he could just not take the Ativan, but it does legitimately seem to be helping. 

“Huh…yeah that would make sense. You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to.” Chase looks up and raises an eyebrow. “Comorbidity or symptom?” 

“So far? Symptom, but it could be either to be entirely honest.” He’s wondered for a while now if he had an underlying anxiety disorder that wasn’t as obvious as it could be because of the overlap. 

“Fair.” They sit in silence for a moment and then Foreman chuckles. “Wanna hear what House is planning to do to Wilson?” 

Chase actually seems like he smiles at that, and Foreman knows that if he wasn’t crashing he’d be grinning all way too many of his teeth. 


	7. Things are Okay (Until they Aren't)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robert crashes and evens out, that's the pattern of his life. The problem is, evened out might not be what everyone expects and it's a whole lot worse than even Chase can see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Self harm at the very end of the chapter, also SELF DEPRICATION (not very much but occurs twice)
> 
> Please read and review as you see fit and I hope to have another chapter ready for you all soon, every time I get a notification from this account my heart tries to stop and I mildly panic and have to hype myself up to be able to read the notification but I still check for the next few days after posting in an almost obssesive manner

Robert evens out from the crash, at least as much as seems possible these days. Part of him is saying that it’s stress from changing departments still, but that change was six months ago at this point, and it’s not like he didn’t pass his surgical boards already too. The other part of him is saying this is just his normal now. There’s tension in the back of his head and in his shoulders, and he knows for a fact that he’s having sensory issues when Allison chewing toasts puts him on edge. 

So he falls back on what he knows will work (hopefully). He starts running more, makes sure that he keeps taking his medication as directed, including the Ativan that was added, tries to keep some sort of a sleep schedule and tries to not have to interact with other humans outside of work.

Alison gives him a week before calling him out on isolating himself while depressed and asking in that pitiful condescending voice of hers if he’s okay. 

Chase walks away from the conversation before he says something he’ll regret when not irritable. He knows he’s being unreasonable, but he’d rather be unreasonable than exhausted. 

——————————-

Alison gives it another few days before she gives up on being nice and sits down heavily across from her boyfriend at a table in the cafeteria.

“Morning.” He raises an eyebrow at her. 

“Good morning.” She pauses and pushes the book that she’s carrying towards him on the table. “Don’t feel obligated to read this. Also, we are getting dinner tonight, I already checked your schedule and I want sushi.” 

“Fine.” He looks annoyed but also resigned and doesn’t even glance at the book. “Sorry I’ve been weird.” 

“It’s okay, I’m not mad.” She settles back in her chair further. “You’re isolating though, and it’s been more than a week, and I miss you.” 

“Sorry again. I just...haven’t had the energy I guess.” He’s mainlining coffee, even though one of the main things he’s supposed to be working on is cutting down his caffeine consumption. Chase figures he’s allowed to have at least one vice and coffee isn’t a bad one. “I’ll try to be better about it.” 

“Thank you.” 

“Why the book?” She looks down at it and Alison can tell he’s reading the cover. 

“Found it on the break room swap table. Thought about you.” It’s a copy of a book about running from your problems, but in a helpful way. Chase snorts at it. “What?” She sounds exasperated. 

“I don’t need this.” He pushes the book back towards her. 

“I’m not saying you do, it just reminded me of you. Just do me a favor and think about it?” Chase knows that she wants him to try to step down his medications, and on some level he agrees. He knows a lower dose of lithium would be less dangerous, knows that if he can take less Prozac he might not have as many accidentally triggered manic episodes. 

“If I read it will you stop trying to convince me that lavender prevents panic attacks?” He doesn’t even look around to make sure no one overhears before saying it and Cameron knows that she’ll have to bring it up again later, but instead of pushing it she just huffs and stands up from the table. 

“You’re being an ass. I’ll meet you downstairs at 6:00.” And then she’s gone and Chase is left sipping at coffee that tastes like plastic and staring at the book on the table, wondering if he’s being an asshole or if Alison is being annoying. 

He figures she’s probably right, he’s been retreating pretty badly and he’s never been very good at knowing what his tone is. 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------

The book sucks. It’s a bunch of alternative holistic approaches to trying to reduce stress by exercising and has a weird underlying story of the narrators ‘friend’, who Chase reads as a particularly bland self-insert, beating her depression by running a marathon. Chase figures that at least part of her ‘miraculous medication free transformation’ was caused by the 70-odd pounds that she lost in her journey. He’s not mad at the author, but it doesn’t do anything for him aside from piss him off.

Chase takes an extra dose of his anxiety medication before changing out of his scrubs and back into normal clothes for dinner. He knows that his nerves are on edge, has been relatively jumpy all day and the undercurrent of anger now coursing through him is bound to bite back if he doesn’t subdue it. And the only options available are hiding in his apartment alone and pissing Alison off more, or dosing himself and pretending to not hate everything the rest of the night.

Dinner goes fine, he doesn’t snap on Alison and she seems satisfied with his attitude. The entire time they sit there, Robert just wants to go to bed and pretend today didn’t happen. 

They go to her place after, and as usual they have sex. Chase doesn’t really care, but he can admit that he’s not really into it. It might be the depression, or it might be something else, but he just can’t bring himself to care.

Alison doesn’t seem to notice. Or if she does, she doesn’t seem to care.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Robert spends the next two weeks trudging through his days, it’s not bad. He’s been worse and he’s had worse weeks and he can say with absolute certainty that he’s been more depressed before. That doesn’t mean it’s good. But he’s functional. 

Kevin knows something is wrong when he has his appointment, but Chase just tells him he’s following his updated medication schedule, and he’s adjusting and trying. He knows he must look rough when he starts getting asked if he’s going to hurt himself. Surprisingly, that particular urge hasn’t cropped up this time, he’s just Tired.

He tells Kevin that, and gets the half glare, before he slowly starts explaining what’s happened in the last month of his life, and when he gets to the forced date with Alison, Kevin stops him.

“After the date, did your mood change? Was there any disruption?” Kevin sits forward with his notebook across his knees and Chase shrugs. “No?”

“I mean maybe? But nothing that I really noticed, I think I was still crashing when that happened, so...could have just been that.” He doesn’t feel abjectly anxious right now, which is a distinct improvement from previous experience. 

“Robert, I’m going to ask you a question.” Kevin says and Chase shifts uncomfortably. “Did you want to sleep with Alison that night?”

“I mean...I didn’t mind it? I’m a guy so…-” He shrugs again, still obviously uncomfortable. 

“But did you want to? Or did Alison want to and you just went with it to make her happy?” 

“Of course I wanted her to be happy?” Chase asks, confused by Kevin’s line of questioning. “And we’ve discussed before, I get hypersexual when I’m manic, this was just her taking the lead.”

“Robert...I think you need to sit down and have a long conversion with yourself about this relationship you’re in and what it means to you. We don’t have to do that now, but I want you to think about it, could be nothing, but you’ve said a few things before and then that comment...just do me a favor and think about it?” Kevin settles back in his chair. 

“Yeah, okay...I can do that I guess.” Robert can tell that the therapist is using the kid gloves, he’s gotten pretty good at reading his moods over the years and pressing too hard right now will just have him shutting down. Robert appreciates it, sometimes he thinks he needs the kid gloves.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------

The self-loathing sets in full force the next day after he has to redo a stitch in the theater. It’s not a big deal, and realistically Robert knows that. But when his brain feels like static and every single person feels like they have lasers for eyes, and focus only for him, it feels like the world is ending. He holds it together until he closes, until after he scrubs out and then it's all downhill. 

He finds himself pacing in the locker room as soon as he can, thoughts screaming in his head.

_ Useless. _

_ Fuck up. _

_ Good for nothing. _

_ Just a hobby, you can’t do anything right. _

_ Kill yourself, it’d do everyone a favor _ .

Robert knows it’s irrational, knows that the thoughts aren’t logical. But that doesn’t stop them from having his mom’s voice, with a random interlude of his father’s deep monotone when the subject is his intelligence. 

He’s hyperventilating in the corner of the locker room before he knows what's going, and Robert realizes in an oddly detached manner that he’s on a shit ton of anti-anxiety medication and is still fucked up enough to be having an anxiety attack. The thought would have him crying if he wasn’t already.He feels like he deserves it, after all he screwed up the procedure, no matter how minor the issue really was. He wonders if the anxiety would have kicked his ass earlier if Putman hadn’t forced him into taking Ativan everyday for the interim. 

He calms himself down eventually, and the first thing he does is wash the salt off of his face, followed quickly after with sending a page to his supervisor saying he’ll meet him in the break room in 10 if possible. 

Robert’s direct supervisor doesn’t know exactly what's wrong with him, but he doesn know that something isn’t normal and their department head knows what’s wrong with the Australian. 

Mathews meets him in the break room just a few minutes after he asked for it and apparently it’s visible to everyone else that something is Not Right. It’s times like this that Chase hates being a doctor working in a hospital with other doctors who are trained to notice things like this. Mathews takes one look at him, tilts his head and sighs while sitting heavily down on the couch next to him.

“If I send you home are you going to come back tomorrow?” Robert knows what the actual question is and he realizes he must look even worse than he imagined. 

“Yeah, of course.” In a moment of pure honesty he continues with, “I think I had a panic attack.” It seemed worse than a normal anxiety attack and he’s never had one with only an hour of self loathing as lead up, normally it takes days to build itself into the impossible wall monster that sits on him and screams until he breaks down.

“Those suck. You okay right now?” Robert nods in response to the questions, settling for looking down at his feet. “Okay.” Mathews nods too and seems to think for a minute. “I really can’t lose the body today...but you’re in no position to be here if something triggered a panic attack...do you think rounds will trigger anything?” Mathews must have an idea that his ‘pre existing medical condition’ is a mental health issue if he’s being so reasonable.

“I should be okay, honestly I shouldn’t even be having a problem overall. I’m just being stupid like always.” Mathews raises an eyebrow at him that Robert barely sees out of the corner of his eye. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for something that didn’t happen.” The older man, grey hair sprinkled across his face in a noontime five o’clock shadow, puts a paw of a hand on Robert’s shoulder and he can’t help the reactionary flinch. It’s minor, but he knows Mathews noticed. “You’re okay, I know your nerves are probably fried right now, but just answer me these two questions.” He pauses, waiting for Robert to give him a sign to continue. “You’ve had a panic attack before right?”

“Yeah...a few.” Robert answers, nodding the answer as well.

“Then on a scale of one to ten of the worst panic attacks you’ve ever had...what did this one rank?” The hand is heavy on his shoulder.

“It was nothing...like a two-three at worst.” Robert takes a deep breath and shrugs out from under Mathews hand as politely as he can. “It’s just....” he adds after a slight pause. “It’s just that I’m on anxiety medication and I still managed to have a panic attack because I’m useless and I screwed up on my last procedure.”

“You messed up?” He sounds incredulous. “How?” It’s not angry, more exasperated than anything.

“Popped a stitch while I was closing, had to re-do and fish out the suture.” Robert runs a hand over his face, feeling his shaking fingers rest on his chin for a moment before returning to his lap to yank and pull at each other in some futile attempt to calm the frustration at himself that he’s feeling.

“So? It’s a stitch? And obviously it’s not a big deal if I didn’t hear about it.” Mathews stands and puts a hand out toward Robert, urging him to stand. “Look I really wish that I could send you home without asking anything, really I do. But you know how badly staffed we are this week, go home if you need to, just page me first so I can tell Hourani, but I can change the schedule so you are only doing rounds the rest of the day.”

“Thank you...really I appreciate it.” Robert tries to convey his sincerity as well as he can with his expression, but he thinks it probably mostly looks like he’s about to cry.

“It happens, and it’s better than you can identify that you shouldn’t be in the theatre than going in there and making an actual mistake.” He pauses a moment and then quickly continues with, “Not that you ever would, you are one of the most meticulous surgeons in the department. And that’s saying something, Kursik legitimately has OCD.” Something has Robert wanting to tell him the truth, has him wanting to tell Mathews what his medical condition is, but he doesn’t. 

“Thank you for understanding...I just don’t think I should be in there when my hands keep shaking intermittently.” He’s already admitted to being on anxiety medication, so it doesn’t hurt to tell the older man. 

“When you get a chance, maybe get a Xanax? You look about ready to fall apart and I think you might need it.” Robert snorts a half laugh at what Mathews says. 

“I have a script, I’ll uh...I’ll do that when I have time to be ditzy.” Robert likes to equate his Xanax brain to the ditzy blond stereotype that so many people like to attribute his attitude to. Accept when he gets angry, then they just call him a bitch and it never means anything. “Likes to knock me on my ass.” He adds.

“Take care of yourself.”

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

He never ends up finding time to take the Xanax and killing off the end tendrils of the panic attack, partially because Alison schedules another impromptu date that Robert doesn’t have the energy for and mostly caused by the mass casualty event that occurs 2 hours before the end of his shift and has him stuck in OR3 until 4 hours past when he’s done for the day. He makes a few stupid mistakes and the shame and guilt dig into his skin like a needle. When he messes something up, that he had no idea was going to happen Kevin will comment later when he explains why he’s being evasive, he has to physically bite his tongue and as soon as he has a minute he’s in the bathroom slamming his fists into his legs as hard as he can, just to punish himself for the shame and quiet the thoughts. 

_ Useless. _

_ Fuck up. _

_ Good for nothing. _

_ Just a hobby, you can’t do anything right. _

_ Kill yourself, it’d do everyone a favor _ .


	8. Things Aren’t Alright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things always have to get better before they get worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: mentions of child abuse and self harm
> 
> Apologies for any formatting errors, this was written and posted from my phone

He calls into work the next day. Alison doesn’t bother him and he spends the day in bed, alternating between sleeping and working himself into heart pounding terrible panic. Chase wouldn’t be the one to say it, but if he was going to kill himself, today makes a top ten choice of days to do it. He doesn’t, but the thought is there, and he doesn’t have the energy to deny it. He figures he also doesn’t have the energy or will power to do anything more strenuous than crying in bed and occasionally stumbling to the bathroom and drinking a few gulps of water from the facet. He wants to be drunk or dead. Right now he’d be okay with either. 

The next day he drags himself up, stands under scalding water for a bit too long without actually touching the soap or anything and then mechanically dresses for work. Scrubs are easier, and no one will question it. He does his best, putting on his most comfortable long sleeve shirt under the scrub top and fuzzy socks under his sneakers. He’s numb. 

In a haze he drives to the hospital, parks in his normal spot and makes his way inside. It could be raining or snowing or bright and hot, Chase couldn’t tell someone if they asked once he’s inside. Coffee helps. By the time he finishes his second cup and shrugs off no less than 3 half hearted attempts from coworkers to figure out why he was out yesterday, the world has lost at least half of its fog and he can string a whole sentence together into a thought process. If he was thinking clearly he’d tell Hourani that he shouldn’t be working today, but then again...if he was thinking clearly it wouldn’t be a problem. 

By noon he feels almost human, it’s mostly the caffeine keeping him from curling into a ball in the corner of the doctors lounge, but he feels like he exists again. Alison knows something is wrong and she takes him by his hand and leads him outside instead of to the cafeteria at lunch. 

“What’s going on? You look like you’re about to melt.” He shrugs and sits down heavily on the bench she’s led them too. “Robert talk to me.” 

“Nothing...just, had a few bad panic attacks in the last few days. Drained.” He knows it’s more than that, and he lets out a shaky breath. “I’m okay.” 

“You sure?” He nods, and she rubs her thumb over the back of his hand. “You’ll tell me if you're not?” 

“Of course. I’m going to tell you something.” Chase takes a deep breath, and then another. “I spent most of yesterday sleeping or...crying.” Chase rolls his eyes at himself. “If I was going to do something to myself, it would have been yesterday. But I didn’t, and I’m okay.” 

“I’m so sorry, I should have called or come by.” Alison’s eyes are wide and she looks truly horrified. 

“Don’t be...really Alli, don’t be sorry. I probably wouldn’t have gotten up to unlock the door anyways, and my phone was on silent.” He shrugs again and leans forward to kiss her forward quickly. “I’m okay, I always am. It was just a really rough day, but it’s over and that’s it.” The edge is still there, and Chase knows one wrong word or action could send him plummeting over the cliff again, but he’s always been good at ignoring things he doesn’t like. “How was your morning?”

“If people could stop hurting themselves by doing stupid things that would be great. Had a kid come in with a busted ankle… thought it would be a good idea to cover a trampoline with water.” Chase can’t help but snicker at that, imagining the moment the child realized he had messed up. 

“I’d have probably done the same...little boys are stupid you know.” He’d done things just like that, and he’d had his own fair share of stitches and casts because of it. 

“If we ever have kids...no trampolines.” He looks up at that, raising an eyebrow. “Oh like you haven’t thought about it.” They’ve never talked about kids and only vaguely has marriage been mentioned. 

“Fine...no trampoline.” The sun feels nice, and Alison's hand in his feels like an anchor. 

They continue on for the rest of his lunch break and before Alison’s paged chirps. Robert feels almost completely human again by the time they part ways, and the static at the back of his brain feels like it might have decreased. He knows that human interaction helps, that not being alone when he feels like the world is pressing down on his chest helps, but it’s so easy to forget when it takes all the effort he has just to say ‘hello’ and play the game of being human. 

———————————

It’s called depersonalization, and Chase is intimately familiar with it, however unfortunate that is. When it gets bad, when his skin is crawling with invisible ants and the anxiety makes him second guess his every action and choice and focus on everything that can be perceived as a mistake, he feels like an outsider looking in. Like there’s a robot, or some vague part of his soul inhabiting his body and he’s helpless to do anything about it. He just sits on the outside of the glass window of his life and watches, seeing all the mistakes in 1080p HD. He’ll eventually slam back into his own being, usually after he fucks something up and the back of his throat tries to close, and the pressure gets too much to bear and he’ll be in himself again. 

Even the coping strategies that he’s tried so hard for so long to keep to will fail him, pressing his toes into the floor and his palms into solid surfaces. Nothing will work. He just had to ride it out. 

The next time he sees his therapist, Kevin calls him out on it within the first 5 minutes. 

“You’re not entirely here right now are you?” Kevin asks, and sets his ever present legal pad down on the table next to him. “We’ve talked about this Robert.” 

“It’s not on purpose.” It’s been almost a week since his impromptu day off, and he’d let the facsimile of humanity fall over him later that night. “Just happens.” 

“It happens because you’re scared, and you want to be safe. It’s okay, we just need to figure out why it happened this time.” When he was little, really little, he thought he was just daydreaming. It had been as a teenager that he’d realized it was something more. Whenever his brain got too out of alignment, he’d go away somewhere safe and watch. Whenever mother got too drunk, or father too angry, he’d do this. Now he knows it’s a subconscious coping mechanism, but back then it had just been...a thing. 

“I popped a stitch.” That had to be the instigating factor, it’s what had set off this whole mess. 

“Forgive me for asking...but why does it matter?” Robert's foot starts tapping and he feels the static come back full force, even if the foot feels detached from the rest of him. 

“Because it just proves that I’m terrible at everything and someone is bound to notice eventually that I don’t deserve to be here.” Robert knows it’ll make Kevin concerned, that his words have a quality to them that he generally tries to hide. 

“Don’t deserve to be where?” Robert tries to force himself to take a deep breath, to slam back into his own self and stop faking. But like everything lately, he fails at it. 

“Here. In New Jersey, at PPTH. As a doctor. Maybe I’d be a better...I don’t know. Shoe salesman.” He breaths out a half sigh of relief that his mouth doesn’t run away from him this time. “I’m sorry.” 

“No no no, don’t apologize. I just think we need to figure out why you felt the need to be safe so badly that you hid away.” As an outsider, the conversation makes him feel weak, but in the background he can feel his heart pounding in his chest. “Am I right though, that you aren’t 100% in this room with me right now?” 

“I’m here.” Robert wants to argue, but he can’t. Kevin is right. 

“Okay. How about this, when was the first time you remember this happening?” Whenever they’ve spoken of his depersonalization in the past, it’s been of the times it’s impacted his life or the times since he started seeing Dr. Putman. 

“I was maybe 7 or 8.” He only knows that because he’d been just taller than the counters, and still needed a stool to brush his teeth. “My father...he was mad. I’d gotten a bad mark on a spelling test. And he slapped me...and I thought he slapped me out of me. I was watching.” Much like he’s watching right now. 

“You’ve never told me that your father hit you before now.” Robert freezes, realizing the truth. In all the years since, he’s never told anyone, not Alison, not Kevin, not even Eliza that his father had hit him. It felt like a non-problem. “Did it happen again? Or just that one time?” 

“I wasn’t a good kid.” But it wasn’t nearly as bad as what his mother would do. “I deserved it.” He knows he’s going to slam into himself soon, can feel it as he digs into the memories he thought he’d destroyed. He pulls his feet up into the chair and wraps his arms around his knees. 

“Robert...that right there, that statement? That’s a classic and you know it. No matter what you did, you didn’t deserve it.” He can’t look at Kevin, all he can do is watch and try not to cry, stuck in the back corner of his brain where nothing can hurt him. “Okay, let's talk about something else, obviously this conversation isn’t helping the current situation. “ That’s the great thing about Kevin, he always knows when to change the subject. Robert knows that he’ll bring it up later. 

“Sorry. I’m trying to be here, really I am.” He knows he’s on the edge of tears , but he just wants to pull his knees in more and stop breathing. 

“Okay...it’s alright. You can stay away if you need to for now. But I can’t let you go home after the conversation we just had and know that you’re not here unless you have someone to go home with.” Robert has almost gotten himself locked up a few times, has almost said the wrong thing to the wrong person and ended up on a psych hold at least 3 times before. He hates it every time. 

“Alison.” He whispers, trying as hard as he can to ground himself, but he knows he can’t truly do what he needs to right now. Not in this office. If he makes himself bleed he’ll come back to himself, it always works without fail. “Alison can stay with me. Please don’t lock me up.” He mutters without meaning to. 

“No, I’m not going to lock you up. Honestly I don’t think that would help, I’m just worried about you is all. Why don’t you call her and then we can keep talking?” 

——————

He’s convinced Kevin to not be as concerned for him by the time Alison pulls up in her Kia. Robert knows it’s not the closest he’s come to being put on an involuntary hold, but he knows he’ll have to be careful for the next few months, knowing that Kevin will be listening for any hint that he’s not safe. 

The closest was when he’d ended up in the emergency department during university after drinking himself sick just trying to sleep. He’d promptly found out that antidepressants without lithium made him so manic he doesn’t remember the week leading up to that incident. He knows that he was off his medication, but this time? This might be the first time he’s been threatened with it while being on his meds though. It’s just more evidence to his theory that he’s getting worse. 

—————————-

“Why’d I have to come pick you up?” Alison asks in the car, and Robert stares out the window absently, lost in the haze of the Xanax he’d taken in the bathroom before leaving the therapist's office. He figures it might help bring him back to himself. “Robert...why did I have to come pick you up? What happened?” 

“Kevin overreacted.” He says in a dejected monotone. 

“Really?” Robert shrugs and watches his breath fog the glass of the passenger seat of the car. “Robert...it’s been rough lately. Do you think maybe Kevin was right? And if so, what do you think you should do to fix if?” 

“I can’t change the past, and I really really don’t want to have to take anything else.” He hates the amount of medication he takes currently, hates being tired all of the time and having to keep to a schedule. 

“Then don’t, find something else that helps.” Luckily it seems like she’s done and the rest of the ride to her apartment is done in comfortable silence, with a short stop at his place to grab cloths and the aforementioned medications. 

He doesn’t take his lithium that night. Hoping that switching to half dosages will allow the Prozac to work and stop whatever is happening. 

Really, Chase should have known that self adjusting was the last thing he needed to be doing then. 

A week later he realizes his mistake and goes back to taking his regular amounts, but he throws up so violently after the first dose that he gives himself a nosebleed. Alison thinks he has the flu going around the hospital and it’s a good thing he was still staying at her place when he comes down with it. It’s so bad his shins hurt and he can’t stay awake for more than an hour or two at a time. His hands are shaking so badly he can’t even drink water without spilling on himself. 


	9. Wedding Shoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Weddings are stressful. That's not the only thing going on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there! Sorry I've been late with this chapter, it's just been really hard to write lately and I kind of lost where I was going with this fic, however there are a few more chapters that have been written for this previously and that I just need to edit. 
> 
> The next chapter and possibly the one after that will be flashbacks again, I know a lot of you don't like those however I know that it's going to be very difficult to write the Dibala incident and instead of making everyone wait forever, I'll use the opportunity to post the flashbacks that have already been worked on. 
> 
> Please let me know if anyone is even reading this anymore, and as always if you see anything let me know so I can fix it. Sorry again for taking forever with this chapter.

It takes Chase much longer than he’s willing to admit to work up the courage to propose, but when he does he goes out and buys a ring, one he knows Alison will love, and plans a perfect weekend out of town. And then she goes and messes it all up by refusing to leave for the weekend, and Chase realizes that it’s because she knows what he was planning. 

They break up and Chase does what anyone would do, he gets drunk in his apartment and watches bad movies. Oddly enough, he doesn’t feel off at all. Not even factoring in that he’s self adjusting his medication again, since it seems like lowering the amount of lithium he’s taking is the only way to stop throwing up. He was going to give it a couple more weeks and then bring up the situation to Putman, maybe schedule a blood test to see if the reason really is lithium toxicity. Chase knows he sucks at keeping up with what are supposed to be regular blood tests, but he figures that as long as he feels physically okay, he’s fine. 

But then they get back together, and instead of his perfect proposal he asks her in the locker room. And then there’s planning the wedding, and the bachelor party (and the unintended anaphylactic reaction) and getting everything together to get married. He forgets to bring it up. And besides, he feels fine. Better than he has a while and not manic at all, he’d even say that on the sliding scale, he’s not nearly as depressed as he has been lately either. It’s good.

The wedding is amazing, and their short honeymoon even more so. Robert stays fine, and he feels truly normal for an extended period of time for the first time in a long time. 

———————————

They’re laying in bed one morning, procrastinating getting up for work and Alison rolls over, putting her head on his chest and looking up at his face.

“I didn’t want to say anything but...you seem better than usual.” Alison says, her hair spread out over his chest and sleep still clouding her eyes. 

“I feel better than usual.” Robert shrugs, shifts around a bit and then sighs, “I’m going to tell you something.” It’s one of the first times that he says it to her without being immediately hit by a wave of anxiety afterwards. “I’m on less lithium than I have been in years, still taking some and the Prozac and the Ativan, but it seems to be working a lot better.” Maybe when his doctor added the Ativan they should have stepped down the mood stabilizer, but it’s better late than never. 

“That’s good, really it is.” She seems to be actually happy about it, and she smiles up at him. 

“I haven’t even had a panic attack in weeks...and I legitimately can’t remember the last time that was true.” He knows it’s kind of a lie, he’d had a pretty decent one the night before the wedding, but he figures he’s justified in that since it’s a pretty standard reaction. “Enough about my stupid head, we do actually need to get ready for work.” And also unfortunately Alison is laying her head on his stomach in a way that’s making his bladder feel extremely full. 

“Fine.”She fake groans and rolls off of him.

—————————————

“I need to tell you something.” Robert starts off with, he’s sitting in Putman’s office, it’s that time of the year again when they have to actually talk so his refills get signed for. “And I need you to hear me out on it, and not jump to conclusions.”

“Alright, I’m listening.” The older man settles forward and Robert takes a breath before continuing.

“I’ve been doing better the last few months, significantly better, haven’t had a depressive episode or a manic one, and my anxiety might finally actually be under control. But I haven’t been completely truthful with either you or Kevin, and you need to be aware of what I’ve been doing.” He knows he’s rambling, but the lead up is necessary. “I haven’t been taking my medication as directed. I stepped down the lithium to half, didn’t touch the Prozac or the Ativan dosages. I go for a run every morning and if I start feeling off, even if it’s in the middle of the day, I make time later in that day to go to the gym because it seems to help. Honestly it seems to help more than medication ever has.” 

“Okay.” The man pauses, seems to think for a moment and then continues, “while I wholeheartedly disagree with the method, I can understand the results. You seem better, and that’s great. However, you know just as well as I do that patients shouldn’t adjust their own medications.” 

“I know, but I felt like I wasn’t making any progress and I needed to make a change. I’m aware that it was stupid but it worked.” Chase shifts in his seat and then settles back. “Alison doesn’t know, however I would like to stay at this level or perhaps even less.”

“We can definitely work with that. Why didn’t you tell Alison what you were doing?” Chase shrugs and runs a hand through his hair. 

“She thought I had the stomach flu, and I was honestly really depressed when it all started,and then there was the wedding and everything. I just forgot to tell her and then it had been too long to say anything to her without getting the bitchy response.” He knows that being afraid to tell his now wife things is bad, but he also knows that it stems from some pretty bad trust issues that he’s never actually sat down and unpacked because he knows it'll be bad. And if he can avoid triggering an episode by burying his issues? Then he’s more than willing to repress it until the day he dies. 

“Okay, I’ll accept the reasoning there, however I will put this out there. Stop messing with your own meds, it worked out this time but you’ve done it before and it’s been disastrous.” Chase nods, he knows that he can’t always just do it by himself and that at least a fair amount of the medication is necessary for his day to day functioning, however that doesn’t mean he wants to stay on it. 

“Fine, I accept the terms and conditions. But I feel good...better than I have in far too long and it doesn’t feel like I’m on an edge of anything.” He always gets concerned when he feels good, or too okay for too long. Always feels like it might be a warning sign of an episode gearing up. 

“And I agree that that’s fantastic.” Putman leans back in his chair and spins his hand through his fingers for a moment. “I’ll lower the Lithium prescription to where you’ve been at, however with that you need to make sure that you’re noting any changes or signs. How’s the Ativan been working out for you?”

“It’s good, better than I was expecting to be honest. I think a major thing is that you added the Ativan and we didn’t adjust anything else, which makes sense from a medical standpoint, but it just didn’t work out. I think the combination of the Ativan and the Prozac is working better than just the anti-depressants, obviously with the mood stabilizer there as well.” Putman nods along to what he’s saying and Chase picks at his fingernails for a moment before continuing. “In your opinion, is my anxiety a symptom of my bipolar or is more indicative of a secondary disorder? One of my coworkers brought it up when we were talking, and it’s been bothering me since.”

“Honestly? It could be either, you know that.”

The rest of the appointment goes about as expected and Chase leaves feeling not horrible, however he does feel the need to get a good workout in before bed tonight. However that isn’t too uncommon. 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chase should know better than to screw everything up, but he starts getting spacy and nauseous again, and he feels so weak that he doesn’t think he can function at work. So he does what worked last time, he cuts down his lithium again, and again it works. He feels better, but he knows not to tell anyone. 

He knows that he’s being stupid, but he feels like him. There’s no fog now, and he’s not manic, at least he doesn’t think that he is, and he’s only as depressed as he normally feels when it’s a good week. The anxiety has come back full force, but that’s just par for the coarse. Luckily he’s been dealing with that for most of his life and he knows what to do about it. 

By the time House gets the team back together, Chase has been off his medication fully for almost a month and not even Alison suspects anything. Kevin doesn’t notice anything, and he’s just happy that his patient is actually talking about issues they haven’t talked about before. Putman doesn’t see him often enough to notice the day to day differences unless he’s actively manic or dissociating so badly that he’s apt not to remember whole hours of the day. 


	10. Almost the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life is a compiliation of events that line up to change each person and mold them into who they are. Sometimes the mold is broken from the start. 
> 
> Flashback chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING WARNING WARNING
> 
> This chapter contains semi-graphic description of material that may be triggering for certain individuals. If you would like to know what this material is prior to reading, please see notes at the end of the chapter.
> 
> Thank you and I hope everyone enjoys this chapter, it was a beast to write and is a bit shorter than I was hoping for. Please let me know what you think.

It’s two months after his mother dies that Robert almost joins her. It’s a combination of the sleeping pills he’d almost used before, a few lines of cocaine and enough alcohol to have the courage to go through with it that does it. He just wants everything to stop, and if that means killing himself, then so be it. At least no one will have to deal with him any longer. Later once he knows what’s going on, Chase will note that he’s probably in a mixed episode when the incident occurs, but whatever it is that makes him do it, he overdoses in a park. 

He remembers being with people, there was music and it was loud and bright. And then time skips and he remembers sitting down on the bench at the soccer field where he’d played when he was little and staring at the baggie of pills, he knows he was high by then. And he remembers having been drunk for the last 2 days, he figured if he was going to go out he may as well go out like mum did. And it makes everything easier to deal with. 

Chase knows he picked the park because of some sick need to hurt his father. The last one of his sporting events that the man attended was right here, and he’d been sat on that exact bench. But he’d let in 4 goals before being taken out of the game so the other goalie could try, and he saw his father frown and turn away before walking back to the car. He’s crying, and he doesn’t write a note. But he swallows the whole baggie of pills, using the shitty bottom shelf vodka that he traded one of the older kids for to make them go down. And then he sits back and hopes he never has to wake up again.

The next thing he knows, he’s on the floor of the bathroom of his childhood house and everything Hurts. The world is spinning and he’s throwing up until his throat bleeds. It’s hard to breathe, and his heart is pounding hard and slow. He passes out again. 

The next time he wakes up he feels an IV in the back of his right hand and wonders if that means the bathroom was a dream. He knows it wasn’t when he opens pounding eyes and sees his old bedroom. There’s still pressure in his chest and he rolls over just in time to throw up over the edge of the bed and nearly screams with how much his head hurts. He can’t stop shaking, and his heart is pounding in his ears. Something in his chest lurches and he loses time again. 

The world makes a lot more sense the next time he wakes up, his head still hurts and his throat feels like he gargled sand, and it’s hard to catch his breath. But he’s aware enough to wish it had worked and no one had found him. It must have been someone that knew his father, or he’d be at the hospital instead of in his old bedroom. His father must have treated him here at the house. Must have caught it in time to do something. Maybe narcan, or charcoal, or some other drug that Robert isn’t familiar with. All he knows is that he’s alive. 

He wishes he was dead, but right now he’d settle for not being afraid to move. He’s afraid he’ll make a sound or make it hurt more. His father should’ve at least had the decency to let him have his ending. 

It’s a few hours before his father shows up, he doesn’t talk at all at first, just silently checks the IV line and Robert’s temperature and listens to his heart for a moment before walking out of the room again. He’s back quickly though, and Robert recognizes the device in his hands. It’s a portable nebulizer, the one that he knows has been stashed under the downstairs sink since his last bad asthma attack in this house of horrors.

“Your respiration is depressed, and it hasn’t improved in the last 6 hours. Cardiac function seems to have returned to normal, luckily I was able to treat it here.” It’s the first thing his father says and Robert feels himself start getting uncomfortable with his father's presence. “I am only going to have this conversation with you once Robert. This behavior is unacceptable, and I will not tolerate it. Once you are no longer sick from this little...fiasco...you’ll be going off to a seminary school. Hopefully they can help you there.” 

“You should have let me die.” He rolls over and yanks the blankets over his shoulders, shivering and still nauseous. His eyes still don’t feel like they’re focusing right. “Why did you bring me back here?” His voice is rough, barely a whisper to his own ears. 

“Nelson Mann found you unconscious. And you didn’t do a good enough job to do yourself in.” He knows he took enough, had done the math at least three times. “Listen to me Robert, I will not have my son turning into some junkie that ODs on a park bench. It’s unacceptable.” His father takes off his glasses and hangs them from his collar. “The anxiety diagnosis was bad enough...I will not allow this to ruin your life. No respectable boss or company will hire a drug addict.” 

“I told you, months ago, that something was wrong with me.” He feels detached, numb. Similar to how he felt on the anxiety medication but not exactly the same. 

“Robert stop. You’re being ridiculous, and you’re no better than your mother. Following down the same path that she did, obviously she was a bad influence on you.” He wants to argue, wants to get angry at him. But all Chase can do is try not to cry while his father berates him.

“I told you that sometimes I want to die, and now I try to die and you just...you really can’t accept that something is actually wrong with me can you?”

“This...incident...was purposeful?” Robert looks down at the ground and shakily nods, hoping against hope that his father will understand and do something. He knows there’s things out there that will help with this, at least if there isn’t there should be. 

“I tried to tell you.” He whispers, still not rolling over even though his father is pulling at his shoulder and it’s getting hard to breath.

“Preposterous. You had an accidental overdose while on a party binge as a means of dealing with your mother’s death. You are being sent off for school and when you complete secondary, you’ll come back here and attend university.” Robert doesn’t bother to respond. “Stop being stubborn and roll over. I wasn’t joking about your breathing.”

He doesn’t move except to stumble to the bathroom for the next week. His vision evens out, and as the week progresses he can stay awake for longer and longer periods of time. His lungs stop freaking out and he manages to eat something by the fifth day that he clearly remembers that doesn’t come right back up. 

He still kind of wants to die, wants all this shit to be over, but when Eliza comes in and jumps up onto the bed next to him and asks if he wanted to leave her too? He can’t hurt her like that. He can’t hurt his baby sister like that, and he puts his hands on her shoulders and promises to never do this to her again.

He’s just so tired of going from being on top of the world and actually functional to this...nothingness. But now he has to stay alive, because his baby sister needs him to, and even if he’s far away, he has to be there for her. 

When she leaves the room, Robert rolls over onto his stomach and cries. He just lost his last exit strategy. 

Two weeks later he’s on a flight to London.

————————

The seminary works out better than he’s expecting for a while. He’s always been Catholic, went to Sunday school as a child and sang in the church choir, and being immersed in the world of it while also completing school makes him fall more into it. He knows what he did is considered a sin, but when he explains it to the priest at confession a few months later, Robert tells the older man that at the time living felt like more of a sin than suicide. He’s forgiven for it and he promises to pay back his debt by devoting his life to god. 

Robert finds, in that weird middle ground of 2 years in the UK, away from Melbourne and the memories he has there, that two things help calm his brain down better than anything else he’s found yet. One is God and praying and the strict schedule of life at the seminary, and the other is running. Whenever his brain starts going too fast, he can run off the restless energy, or at least most of it, before it gets too bad. It doesn’t help him sleep, but it keeps him from cutting himself, so he calls it a win. For a while, he thinks this might work out for him. 

The nuns are worse than he thinks they will be, but it’s penance. The Sister in charge notices the scars running up and down his arms one day and smacks his knuckles with a ruler before pulling him down the hall and into an office. 

“Why would you do that to yourself? Mark your body which God has made in his image?” When Chase tries to look away she hits his knuckles again and Chase has to resist the urge to snap at her. She’s been targeting him for weeks and he’s Angry. 

“I’ve already spoken to Father Marks about it. He said that God would forgive me for my sins.” The Father didn’t know about suicide attempt, just the self harm. His overdose is a secret between him and the big man upstairs (with only the priest as a messenger). 

“What are you doing to repent for this horrible indiscretion?” If she wasn’t a nun, Chase is sure she’d be cursing at him. 

“All that I can.” He doesn’t know what that means yet, however he’s trying to find out. 

She nods and seems to accept it, but she comes after him again and again after that. And Chase learns to both hate and fear nuns. Other than the Sister’s coming after him and judging him for the evidence he’s left on his skin over the years, seminary is good. He likes it there, hell he might even be happy. 

It all falls through when one of the nuns catches him and the groundskeeper's daughter in a storage shed in a compromising position. 

——//////——

A week later he’s back in Melbourne, sitting in his father's office with way more courage than he feels is acceptable and saying that he’ll go to University. He doesn’t promise to go on to medical school like he’s always been expected to, but he tells his father he’ll at least get a degree. His father just seems happy that his ‘little incident’ didn’t cause brain damage. 

They come to an understanding on the grounds that Robert already has quite a few credits towards a bachelors and only much later will he realize that his father knew he’d go on to more. He’s always gotten bored in school, always been the kid who was reading a journal entry instead of a science fiction novel. He’s not the smartest by any chance, but he’s not stupid either. 

It makes it a lot easier to accept that he’s average at best when he sees who he's up against in his orientation class. The other hard science majors are all either older than him or the same age, and he’d been expecting to be the oldest. Sometimes Chase forgets that he started school a year earlier than most kids and when it comes down to it, if he passes all of his classes on the first try and works through summers, he can graduate in two years. 

He wants to prove that he can do this, and the faster he graduates, the sooner he can leave Melbourne and his father again. 

The problem, Robert finds, is that no matter how much he prays it’s not true, he’s good at this. He’s actually good at this, and even when a few years down the line he sits down and wonders what events in his life have been colored by manias, he’ll know that it’s still true. He might be average, or even kind of stupid, but he’s good at this. He hates the prospect of it, but Robert cannot deny the fact that he’s good at hard science, that he’s good at medicine. 

It doesn’t hurt that he just wants to prove himself still, no matter how much he hates it, a part of him wants to make his father proud of him for once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter contains a semi-graphic depiction of a suicide attempt and partial recovery. Also shown is a conversation where a parental figure (after the attempt) denies treatment for the individual. 
> 
> Please let me know if this warning is not sufficient and I will edit as necessary. Thank you.


	11. The Tyrant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being back on the diagnostics team, however temporary it's supposed to be, feels oddly like going home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See chapter title for spoilers
> 
> AKA this is the first in the series of chapters between the episode 'The Tyrant' and 'Teamwork', and whatever will come after that.
> 
> Please read and review, this chapter has been giving me problems writing and I'm sorry it took a few extra days to update this time. I have started on the next one and will hopefully be finishing it soon.
> 
> Thank you for reading.

When Cuddy asks him to work diagnostics again for a one case minimum, Chase has half a mind to tell her to screw off, but then he reads the file. It is unfortunately, incredibly interesting. Both from a medical standpoint and a quasi-political moral one. And he’s always liked a good puzzle, so he goes for it. Especially when Cuddy asks Cameron too.

Chase knows he can get Allison to agree to one patient, and she’s always been more into diagnostics that he was. He’s just always been crazy enough to go along with House’s insane ideas. And Chase really wants to see what happens this time.

There’s air between him and House that needs to be cleared, air no one else, not even Allison, knows is sullied. Because no matter that he doesn’t remember anything before the ER, Chase knows that House thinks he tried to kill him. Wilson told him a few weeks ago that part of the hallucinations was Amber and House was convinced his subconscious had tried to kill Chase by causing an allergic reaction.

Chase thinks it’s a ridiculous idea and tells Wilson just that, before deciding that he is never telling Cameron this particular detail. She’ll just take it as evidence that House is evil and twisted. 

The only big problem Chase see’s with confronting House about the bachelor party incident is that Chase can feel his brain starting to try and cycle again. And if it goes too low he’ll end up convincing himself that House did mean to kill him and that he deserves to be dead, which he’d really rather not deal with right now or ever. He’s more surprised it’s waited this long to happen than he is annoyed that it’s occurring. 

When he takes his lunch break that first day back on House’s team he debates for a few long minutes if he wants to deal with the impending depression, or run the risk of triggering a manic state. So he flips a mental coin and decides that he should start taking his antidepressants again, but not until after this case is over. He wants to be clear for this.

So what if all he wants is to sleep for twelve hours and cry in his shower? If he makes the mistake of starting up his medication again right now, he’s going to spend the next week in bed trying not to claw his hair out of his scalp. 

Chase has dealt with plenty of episodes on his own before, this will be no different. At least this time he knows he’ll have someone else there if he gets too bad. He’ll have to thank Allison in advance. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------

“You look good.” Chase says, leaning against the doorframe of the office leading to the conference room. 

“You don’t.” House says and Chase shrugs. “Married life not all it's cracked up to be?” 

“I know I look like shit.” He knows there’s bags under his eyes, that he’s lost weight over the past few months. He knows that he’s visibly on edge. “I’m okay.”

“That’s a lie, but we made a deal a long time ago. Can you do your job?” The agreement had stood since they’d made it and Chase nods, using his free hand to push his hair out of his face. 

“Yeah, I can do my job.” He adds to his nod and then continues with, “Do you wanna talk about your time in the loony bin?” Chase knows that House is aware of just how terrified he is of psychiatric care facilities and the threat of commitment to one.

“Why? So you can have nightmares about it for a month?” Chase shrugs again, but his face doesn’t change. “Wow, you are doing a great job at convincing me you’re fine right now.” 

“Sorry. Question?” He’s staring at the ground and fighting the urge to pace. House nods and Chase mimics the motion before speaking. “Am I still the crazy one of the department or do you win?”

“I hallucinated a dead employee, whose input led me to try and kill you.” Chase shrugs again, still staring at the floor. “There was never a question of which one of us was crazier.”

“You didn’t mean to try and kill me.” He mutters and kicks at the floor with the toe of his shoes.

“My subconscious sure did. I was adamant that we get that specific stripper for your bachelor party. And I remembered her from Wilson’s, knew she’d get everyone to do body shots off of her. I remembered that they tasted better because of her body butter.” Chase doesn’t look up while House talks. 

“You couldn’t have known.” Chase steps forward and lets the door fall closed behind him.

“I don’t forget things, and I knew she had strawberry body butter. And I knew you were allergic.” House has obviously thought this conversation through. 

“Still...you couldn’t have known.” Chase finally looks up and makes eye contact with House.

“I did know.” House says and Chase scoffs before rolling his eyes.

“No you didn’t. You couldn’t have known that her lotion had actual strawberries in it instead of artificial. You couldn’t have known she’d still be using the same stuff. And you couldn’t have known that I wouldn’t have an Epi-pen.” Chase has thought it through too.

“In the seven plus years that I’ve known you, not once have you actually carried an Epi-pen on you. Not even at the stupid staff dinners when cross contamination is almost inevitable and there’s always a fruit bowl.” Chase shrugs again. “You know, I still haven’t decided if that’s your passive suicidal tendencies manifesting or just pure stupidity.” 

“I’m not suicidal.” Chase mumbles under his breath. 

“But you have been before.” House adds quickly. “You sure you’re good to be working right now? Normally you clam up much faster when I bring that up.”

“Yeah...I’ve been a lot worse before and been fine. You know that.” Part of him wants to tell House that he’s off his medication, that he feels clearer than he has in years even if his brain keeps trying to run away from him. The other part of their agreement was that Chase would tell House if he fucked with his medication, or if he was changing anything major. This definitely counts.

He doesn’t though and when the door slams behind him, it almost feels like betrayal. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Dibala notices the slight inflection on his accent it feels like someone seeing him for who he is for the first time. The dictator is obviously a horrible person, but when Allison is so quick to judge him without any of her own evidence, it’s frustrating.

The spark of happiness at the back of his brain when Dibala justifies his choice of leaving the church to get a medical degree feels like confirmation that he made the right choice all those years ago. It’s nice to hear from someone that he doesn’t work for and isn’t related to that being a doctor is better than being a priest. It feels good, especially considering that he’s started down the slippery slope of a possible depressive episode.

The doubt begins to creep in when the fake clinic patient tells him about what Dibala’s men did to his wife. The thought has him getting angrier the more the man tells him, and he ends up picturing what he would do if someone did to Allison what was done to this poor man's wife. He would be just as vindictive as this man, and he clenches his fist behind his chart. He wants to be on his side, but he tries to have faith in the system. Just the thought of Allison being raped and murdered like that woman has him wanting to hit something. However, Chase still disagrees with his own wife and her complete disregard for their patient. They have to do their jobs. Have to be able to do their jobs.

Chase wishes that Allison would stop actively trying not to treat the patient and either recuse herself or get over it. She’s so wrapped up in herself that even when Chase starts actively dropping hints that he might not be okay soon, she doesn’t pick up on them. The tired starts and he gets an extra cup of coffee from the diagnostics lounge. It's the good part of being back in the department, the coffee pot is 100 times better than the one in the surgical lounge. Also it makes him chuckle a bit whenever he reads the front plaque on it.

He has a job and he plans to do it, regardless of the questionable morality of the patient. He’s starting to feel off though, and he Has to be able to do his job. So he takes an Ativan and chugs a cup of coffee to try and beat the drowsiness that the anxiety medication is sure to induce. Laughing to himself for a half of a moment about how Kevin is going to react to this whole mess when it inevitably comes up eventually. 

It’s been almost a month since he stopped taking his medication, of course he’s still occasionally taking the anxiety medications,and he hasn’t told Kevin that he stopped taking anything, so he’s having to dispose of the antidepressants and mood stabilizers as he goes. There’s a good chance that when all of this blows up in his face he’s going to have to admit to his shrink that he’s been an idiot for this entire time. 

He’s already thought about not ever going back to Putman, has thought about just cancelling the appointments and stopping the charade. Obviously this is working better than the last time he went off his medication and maybe he’s just mature enough now and good enough at managing his symptoms to deal with it alone. So he functions by self medicating with Ativan and the occasional Xanax and tries not to let anyone know something is different. Especially not right now when there’s a huge spotlight on the department. It doesn’t matter what he wants or feels, they need to do their jobs and Allison is making that much harder than it needs to be by trying to convince him to not do his job.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He’ll always wonder if he hadn’t had the medication in his system if he would have been fast enough to stop the gunman from getting to Dibala’s room. As it is, he’s happy no one got hurt past the split lip and broken nose of the attacker.

The conversation in the hallway, when Chase is patching up the man before the cops show up, starts to tip the scales. Something tells him that the prior child soldier is telling the truth now even if he wasn’t before. The information tells him that Dibala really is that atrocious, and that the genocide will occurr. Somehow, be it the Lorazepam in his system, or just the multitude of facts compiling, his nervousness slips away and all doubt is pushed to the back of his consciousness. He has to know. Has to hear it from Dibala’s own mouth.

Chase doesn’t realize he got blood on his shirt and jacket until Allison points it out later.

He just has to find the right moment to ask, and when he does, when it’s after Cameron has changed her mind because the dictator tried to goad her into killing him. Dibala grabbing Cameron’s wrist hard enough to bruise pisses him off more than anything. 

And when he does ask, Chase gets his answer and he knows Cameron was right all along. Curing Dibala might be worse than letting him die if he’s going to order a massacre. 

It’s a fifty-fifty shot, on the diagnosis, he doesn’t agree with Cameron’s but it’s a lot easier to falsify on anticentromere antibodies test if they’re already doing it. If him and Foreman are right, the treatment will kill Dibala, but if Cameron is right, he'll live to kill hundreds of thousands of people. And Cameron isn’t right nearly as often as she claims to be, or wishes she was. He just has to figure out how to fake the test.

“It’s Scleroderma, we need to do the test.” She’s found his contemplation spot and after a short conversation he knows she’s asking him to get the sample since he’s got a better rapport. And that must say something about him that the best patient rapport he’s had in months is with a psychopathic dictator planning a genocide. 

“I’ll get your blood.” And with that it’s settled, he’s leaving it up to fate. Either his wife is right, or he’s about to kill a man. 

\-----------------------------------------------------

The planning part is almost terrifyingly easy. He knows his diagnosis is right, but he has the chance to fix this before it happens. And he doesn’t think he could live with himself if he hears about the genocide in the news and knows he could have done something to stop it. 

It’s surprisingly easy to find a patient who died from Scleroderma who’s body is still at the hospital and has the same blood type. It adds stones to the scale of what he’s doing. No one is in the morgue, no one sees him take the blood and use the wrong vials. No one notices Chase quietly planning a murder, and he latches onto that. Wonders if it means that someone is watching out for him and letting him go through with this.

Allison doesn’t notice anything is wrong when he drops the blood off, or if she does she doesn’t say anything. Chase knows his hands are shaking and he quickly shoves his hands into the pockets of his lab coat before anyone notices. 

While Allison runs the test he hides in a bathroom stall and lets himself fall back on his tried and true method of mood regulation. He does it on his thigh, knowing that if he goes for the arms someone will notice when he has to scrub in. 

Chase is just about done cleaning up the evidence of his breakdown when he gets paged to the conference room. 

They’re treating for Scleroderma.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Dibala starts bleeding Chase goes into chaos mode, the setting his brain slides into that makes him a good intensivist and better surgeon. When Allison keeps shocking him, and Foreman calls it, Chase is on autopilot when he reads the time. He’ll have to do the chart later, once his brain realizes he just called time of death for a man he murdered, he can feel himself shutting down.

He doesn’t remember walking to the locker room. The next thing he remembers after watching blood pour out of Dibala’s mouth is the inside of the corner stall in the locker room. He’s not hyperventilating, but he is shaking and hugging his knees to his chest. Digging his fingernails into his shins helps a bit, but not nearly enough. 

Once he’s able to pull himself together he stumbles his way to his locker, shoves his lab coat with its blood splattered sleeves into the back of it and fumbles his Xanax bottle open with hands that won’t stop shaking. It’s stronger than the Ativan and he can’t even think straight. Chase figures that even if he didn’t have a preexisting condition making this worse, he’d been having a panic attack. 

He’s still sitting on the bench staring at the locker in front of him when Foreman comes in with the morgue record. 


	12. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dibala is dead. The morgue record is burned. So why does Cuddy have to keep dragging the dead dictator up and forcing them to relive it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Sorry its been so long since the last update, I've been super busy and I just now got my desktop set up again.
> 
> It doesn't help that I'm finding it really hard to write and I am so sorry about the slow updates. Please let me know if anyone is still reading this or if I should just abandon it? Right now I think I'll end this fic at the end of season 6? IDK, I'm working on it and I have a few ideas for one-shot type fics with this as backstory and potentially making this into a series? Please let me know.

When Chase gets home he stumbles to the bathroom, feeling for all he’s worth like he’s fighting through plastic and fog. He turns the water on and almost forgets to take his clothes off before stepping under the spray and sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. Hugging his knees and digging his nails into his legs, he cries. He cries until the water runs cold and the steam goes away, but the fog remains. He cries until his lungs burn and he starts coughing, cries until his eyes hurt from the salt and he knows he should be shivering from the frigid water running into him. He cries until he knows the door is opening and Alison is coming home, he cries until he knows he’s not actively trying anymore. They just won’t stop. He can’t stop them, hiccuping around the sobs that rip free from him and he can feel the small thread of control that he was holding on to snap. 

Someone knocks at the door and it breaks through the fog if only momentarily, he knows it has to be Alison. 

“Robert?” She knocks again. 

“Just a minute.” His voice is rough and when he reaches forward to turn the water off he sees his hands are shaking. He doesn’t feel the cold but his body must be reacting to it. 

Standing on shaking legs and letting out a half sob that turns into a coughing fit, he stumbles out of the tub and wraps a towel around himself before opening the door for his wife. 

“Long shower day?” He wonders if she can tell that he’s been dying for however long since he got home. Wonders if she can see the red in his eyes and the brain fog that must be coating him if he’s suffocating from it. 

“Yeah.” She’ll accept that. And even if she realizes he was crying, well it can’t be that bad if she knows. “Give me a few minutes?” He mutters, waits for her to nod and then closes the door again. His voice doesn’t feel like it belongs to him.

He dresses mechanically, stopping before putting his shirt on and staring at the scars dancing up and down his arms, it wouldn’t hurt to add a few more. 

Chase can say that he’s unequivocally not suicidal, but the fog is thick and suffocating and it needs to be beat back, and the best way he’s found is to indulge in his gross little habit. 

The only thing that stops him is that Alison will notice, and instead he flips the fan on to cover the noise and slams his fists into his thighs a few times, until it aches deep in the muscle. It helps, just a bit but he’s able to wipe his face off and not immediately start crying again. The fog is still there, and he doesn’t know what to do about it, but right now it’s keeping him from screaming his crime out for everyone to hear.

Earlier the plan had been to cook dinner and pretend everything was okay, that it was just another day that they lost a patient. Now it's all he can do to stumble to the bedroom and put on his softest sweater before crawling under the heavy blankets. He yanks the seldom used weighted blanket down from the headboard while he’s at it, letting the twenty pounds hit his shoulder square on and leaving it there. He’s not crying anymore, nor is he even close to sleeping. He’s staring at the wall and trying to even out his breathing and coughing intermittently. Part of his brain that isn’t stuck in the haze is trying to tell him that he’ll feel better if he takes care of himself. He can’t even think to move right now though, it feels like if he even shifts his weight the whole world will know what he did. 

Alison leaves him alone for a while, at least he thinks it’s a while because his hair is mostly dry by the time she puts her hand on his arm. He didn’t hear her open the door. 

“Robert, I know you probably aren’t going to want to talk but I need you to listen.” He half nods, coughs again and wants to bury his head in the blankets but doesn’t. “Today was rough for all of us, but I can see that it’s hitting you really hard. And that’s okay, but I need you to tell me what I can do to help you.”

He tries to respond, really he does. All he gets out is a half choked sob and he presses his forehead into his pile of blankets harder, the only anchor left being Alison’s hand on his arm, rubbing up and down and providing some semblance of normalcy. 

“Okay.” She hesitates and Chase lifts his shoulders to cough a few more times before trying to ground himself again. It’s not working. His usual grounding techniques are useless right now. “Okay, how about this. You keep coughing and I can hear you starting to wheeze a little bit, so why don’t we take care of that.” He half nods again, not knowing what else to do. “I caught you having a panic attack didn’t I?” She sounds sad and Chase knows that's not entirely right, but it’s the closest approximation he has so he half nods. This isn’t a panic attack, it’s worse. “I’m going to go get your inhaler from the bathroom. Do you want me to get one of your Xanax?” 

“Please.” He mutters, knowing that it should help. He can’t understand why it’s not going away, why he can’t just focus on something and shove the issues back to deal with later. He won’t be able to tell Kevin about it, won’t be able to tell Putman. Hell he can’t even tell Alison or she becomes an accomplice to his crime. “Please.” He repeats in a sob, being bombarded by images of her in cuffs, being interrogated about what she knew about her husband committing a murder.

He’s a murderer. 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He doesn’t sleep that night, not for more than the two hours that the anxiety medication knocks him out for anyways. He feels less hazy when he wakes up though, more grounded in reality, no matter how bad reality is right now. Chase doesn’t know how he’s going to work like this, and half of him wants to call in and spend the day being a depressed panicking lump in bed, but that’ll tell too much. He’s sure of it. Not to mention it will confirm House’s earlier suspicion that he can’t do his job.

Alison is still asleep when he stops pretending and carefully crawls out of bed. He figures going for a long run might help clear his head enough to work. Maybe this will all pass and he’ll be okay. Maybe he can disassociate until this all blows over, but everything is too bright and he knows that's too much to hope for. He can’t escape this, and he doesn’t deserve to. 

He always knew he had the capacity for something like this, always knew that if push came to shove and he needed to do something horrendous to protect those he loved, he’d do it. He just never thought that it would be a dictator that he committed the crime against, and for people he never knew and will never know. 

He doesn’t regret it. 

——————————————

By the time he finishes his run the sun is coming up and his chest is burning and constricting again, which he honestly should have expected considering he’d worked himself into half an asthma attack the night before. Most of the time he forgets that he even has asthma, but when it’s cold out, or he works himself up too much, he’ll start coughing and feeling like there’s ropes tightening around his lungs. House had made fun of him for it his first year at PPTH, but it had been in good fun, and since then he hasn’t brought it up. Chase found an inhaler in one of the drawers once with ‘Wombat’ written in sharpie on it and he’d chuckled about it before making sure it was buried deep enough that no one else would accidentally run across it.

He’s making a pot of coffee after showering off his workout when Alison comes into the kitchen. 

“You okay?” She says and leans her shoulder into his as she reaches up to grab a mug from the cabinet. The touch feels nice, like it’s grounding him for a moment.

“Yeah, sorry about last night.” He rocks up onto his toes and back down to his heels a few times. The run helped but he still feels the tendrils of offbeat energy pulling at his actions. “It’s been building for awhile.” It doesn’t feel like manic energy though, just anxiety trying to break free and take over.

“I noticed. Are you going to work today?” He’s half dressed, but generally if he has a breakdown that horrible, he’s down for the count the next day. 

“Yeah...being alone would probably be worse.” If his knee wasn’t aching from the run he’d want to hit himself again. He knows it’ll be a struggle for the next few days to not carve more lines into his arms. Instead he pushes more weight into his left leg, feeling the ache deepen for a moment. “I’m sorry about last night.” He says again. Allison doesn’t comment on him repeating himself.

“I accept the apology however unnecessary it is.” She leans into him a bit harder for a moment before pulling away. “Obviously your lungs feel better.” 

“Yeah, I just...hyperventilated myself into aggravating it last night.” He hasn’t had a full blown asthma attack not triggered by an allergic reaction in years. 

“That’s what I figured happened.” She hesitates while digging in the fridge, he can tell she’s trying to figure out what to say. “I noticed something last night.” 

“I know. There’s too many Prozac in the bottle, I forgot a couple of days but I’m fine.” In reality he knows that since he stopped taking his Lithium he needed to be careful to not trigger a manic episode, so he’d stopped taking the antidepressants too, no matter how much he realized that over the last few months his depression has been getting out of hand. 

“You sure? You know I’m not going to judge you if you think you don’t need them anymore.” It’s when Alison says things like that that Chase realizes she maybe doesn’t know just how chaotic his head is.

“I just...I feel good you know?” It’s a lie, but she won’t notice. “Yesterday not counting that is,” he adds. “But I promise I’m taking care of it.” Alison seems to swing between nearly screaming at him that medication is useless and he would be better off of it and being annoyed when he forgets to take a single dose. Chase figures she could use some therapy herself, but he’s never going to tell her that. “I’m taking care of myself.” He vaguely wonders what would happen if Allison saw a shrink. What she’d end up being told.

“Good.” She doesn’t need to know that by taking care of himself he means that he’s doing what feels right and not taking his medication at all. He’ll have to remember to toss some of the Prozac soon so she doesn’t notice again. “Want me to drive?”

“Up to you.” He’d prefer they went in separately, just in case he needs to escape to his car to calm down, but if he doesn’t leave the decision up to her she’ll bitch for the rest of the day.

———————————-

When Cuddy decides they have to do an M&M about Dibala he wants to melt into the floor. It’s not a good decision, but Chase knows his own brain well enough to sit himself down and decide that he’s going to do something completely stupid. 

He’s going to allow himself to trigger a manic episode, or at least he’s not going to keep trying to keep it from happening. Chase knows that for him, cutting out all mood stabilizers (which he’s already done) and not catching the anxiety in time to medicate it into obedience, and maybe by dosing himself with Prozac, he’ll be able to force it. Or at least he should be able to, and apparently clarity makes him into a murderer, so it might be best to let an episode happen.

Chase already can’t sleep, he’s already having nightmares and as they treat this new patient he can feel himself starting to fall apart, and he’d at least like to have some control over it. 

Foreman calls him out on it before he gets a chance to be too stupid and start taking the Prozac again without touching his Lithium. They’re hiding in the conference room and Chase is vibrating with the first hints of the depression starting to take a back seat to mania when Foreman sets a coffee mug down in front of him. 

“Are you doing okay?” Foreman gives him the look that is reserved for when he’s being judgmental. 

“I’m fine.” He knows he’s talking a little fast, knows that it’s probably obvious to anyone who knows that’s wrong with him what’s going on right now. 

“You’re manic aren’t you?” Surprisingly, Foreman doesn’t sound upset about the fact, he just seems to sigh and sit down across from Chase at the table with all the Dibala files between them. “Look, I need you right now. This is your mess and I need you fully functional because I am not doing this alone.” 

“I know.” He shakes his head and takes the coffee mug, spinning his pen around his fingers a few times before taking a long sip. “Sorry...I just...I can’t sleep and my brain is fucking fried right now.” He cuts himself off before his pressured speech becomes too obvious.

“Anything I can do to help?” He shoves a file over towards Foreman and puts his forehead on the next sheet of paper. Chase shakes his head no and hears Foreman scoff. “You sure?”

“Can I tell you something and you promise not to tell my wife?” He doesn’t pick his head up from the table and just tries to keep his breathing steady and not start bouncing his foot. 

“I’m already helping you cover up murder. Just tell me.” Chase picks his head up but then stares at the table, unable to force himself to make eye contact with Foreman. 

“This morning I decided that I’m going to let the manic episode that I could feel starting happen, because it’s better than if I’m depressed.” He starts bouncing his foot. “I know it’s fucking stupid. I just don’t know what else to do, and I’m getting my ass kicked right now.” It doesn’t help that since the dictator died every time he closes his eyes he sees gushing blood and hears the paddles charging. It doesn’t help that the anxiety that was so well controlled two months ago is now slamming into him full force. 

“You’re right, it is fucking stupid. What do you need to do to stop it, or minimize it?” Chase shrugs and breaths out slowly. He’s not sure he even could have stopped the episode from happening, but he’s fairly sure that he could have prevented it, or at least minimized the intensity, if he’d been on his medication. 

“I don’t think I can stop it. But I’ll let you know if I figure something out.” The absolute worst thing that could happen is a mixed episode, “I just want to get this shit over with.”

“Chase...please don’t do anything stupid.” 

“I’m not Kutner.”

\------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I grabbed the medication from a cart.” He blurts out to Foreman after they’ve both agonized over trying to cover up the cholesterol numbers. 

“Your great idea is to cover up one problem in the records with another problem with the records?” Foreman retorts and Chase rolls his eyes, knowing that the only reason why he’d been able to come up with the answer is that for the first time in weeks he feels good. Too Good, and it's a problem, but he ignores that and uses it to his advantage. 

“It’s not a problem with the records, it’s a problem with my record keeping.” He knows he must look frantic and Foreman fixes him with a look that says more than words ever will. It’s times like these that Chase really hates that he doesn’t even get the good manias. 

“Follow?” Foreman says and raises an eyebrow at him, Chase sighs overdramatically and gestures for the neurologist to lead the way. 

Once they get into the empty room and Foreman pulls the blinds closed he fixes Chase with a glare. “You need to calm down.”

“I’m fine.” He starts pacing now that they’re alone and he can let himself. “I’ve worked through worse before.” This isn’t nearly as bad as the last time he went off his meds, he’s not going out and getting plastered and taking Adderall out of some nameless girls mouth with lights flashing around them. 

“You sure?” Foreman doesn’t comment on the pacing. 

“Contrary to you being a neurologist, I do happen to know my own head better than you do.” He bites back before pausing for a moment and taking a deep breath as slow as he can. “Sorry.”

“Do you need to take yourself off of this case?” The kid was sick and Chase just wanted to do his job and help.

“No...I can do my job.” He starts pacing again, but slower and more controlled. “Can I tell you something?” 

“You going to make me promise not to tell Cameron?” Chase shakes his head no and clenches his fists a few times. “Then yeah.”

“She already knows this.” He doesn’t know why he wants to tell Foreman, but it feels like he needs to tell someone, and since telling his shrink might lead to accidentally incriminating himself, he figures this is safer. “I don’t get the good manias. I just get...angry and my insomnia gets worse and I can’t control my speech patterns. I get reckless and sometimes self destructive and it feels like there’s electricity in my veins. But I don’t get to be happy.” He fixes a wide eyes stare at Foreman, who has his arms crossed and a look of confusion on his face. “I go through all of this shit and I don’t even get to be happy when it rears its head. I don’t suddenly become incompetant because my chronic disorder is acting up. So trust me, I can do my job and if I can’t I’ll tell you.”

“What do you mean?” Foreman shifts against the wall, his stance relaxed even as he watches Chase pace back and forth on the tile floor. 

“Increased mood is a trademark symptom of a manic episode, however it doesn’t have to be present. For me...I’m fine as long as I’m not on top of the world, because that means I’m not hypomanic, I’m true manic, which I don’t get unless something is wrong.” He doesn’t get true manic unless he’s got too much of the good chemicals floating through him and exacerbating the effects with recreational drugs. “And I know when I can’t do my job. So stop telling me to calm down and let me deal with this.” It’s the first time he’s actually told someone everything like that in years, he’d only told Allison some of it, the not ever getting to be happy part, when he was in the middle of a severe depressive episode.

“Okay.” Foreman looks like he wants to say more. 

“Truth?” Chase pauses, shakes his hands out and then presses his palms into the wall next to the window. “House noticed I shouldn’t have been working before I did last time it got bad and if it gets there again...I’m sure he’ll call me out. He’s already watching like a hawk, he knows something is up.” And there was the conversation they’d had in the office, when House had called him out for being massively depressed two weeks ago and now he’s obviously manic. 

“Good. And I’m watching too, so how about you just help yourself and tell your wife? She’s freaking out about you being distant and that can’t be helping.” Chase drops his head forward into the wall between his hands and Foreman can’t help but wince momentarily at the thud. 

“I can’t...I’d be ruining her life.” 

“Keeping it from her isn’t helping anything.”


	13. Thoughts and Prayers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His normal coping mechanisms aren't working. Allison knows something is wrong, Foreman knows what is wrong. Chase just wishes he could be normal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: nothing that this fic hasn't touched on before, however I will say it again. This chapter includes suicidal ideations and self harm. In short, Chase is really not doing good but he's trying to keep it together as well as he can. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who commented on the last chapter, this is dedicated to you. I was really thinking of leaving this to sit and collect dust but you all motivated me to keep writing. There should be a few more chapters coming soon and I have decided that this fic will end with the end of season 6-ish. However I am thinking about turning it into a series, mostly just because there's a lot of things I didn't touch on in this that I want to. So thank you to everyone who commented and I will add this as well: @ Birdstreet here's some more sad season 6 Chase, and I promise there's more coming.

His skin is vibrating and Chase can’t even pretend to focus, he feels like his skeleton is trying to escape his body and if he’s not bouncing his leg or chewing on a pen or tapping his fingers he’s pacing.

He knows that Allison can tell something is going on, especially as they finish up their current case and the patient is being released. He’s glad that the kid made it, it’s never a good thing when he gets an emergency page to the OR to drill burr holes in a child's skull. It’s unfortunately not the first time it’s happened. 

The M&M happens and Chase counts his way through watching and thanks the Xanax that he’d taken to keep him from actually freaking out in the auditorium. Cuddy snags him before he gets a chance to leave and asks if he can cover the overnight emergency pager for that night and Chase agrees quickly. It’s not like he needs to sleep, and it makes sense to have him cover if diagnostics doesn’t have a patient. Especially since he’s supposed to be going back to Thomas’ department in two weeks anyways. 

Working for House again was never supposed to be a permanent move. Except Cuddy makes him an offer he can’t really justify denying, shoehorning it in after he pockets the emergency pager. She’ll let him keep his surgical privileges, and if he wants to pursue further certifications she’ll sign off on them, if he goes back to diagnostics on a full time basis. He agrees, simply because he forgot how much he likes the puzzles and he has to see this shit show through. They settle on a schedule where he’ll be on-call one week out of the month, but during the day so he’s not pushing too many hours, but enough that Cuddy can use him. 

It doesn’t seem like being used if he’s doing his job. And Chase really does like doing surgery. He texts Allison, knowing she’ll be waking up around now and wondering where he is. 

She responds by calling him and Chase can tell she’s angry by her tone. He spends the conversation walking up and down the back stairwell and hoping Allison can’t tell what he’s doing from the echo. 

She’s pissed off at him for taking Cuddy’s deal.

————————————————————-

Foreman can tell something is off because Chase is pacing more than he has in years as far as he can remember. He’s pacing back and forth across the conference room and tossing the ironic Prozac branded stress ball back and forth between his hands in an almost frantic manner. 

“You’re making me dizzy.” Foreman mutters, catching the half second hesitation out of the corner of his eye.

“Sorry.” It doesn’t stop Chase from continuing pacing though, although he does seem to adjust his path so it’s in a straighter line. “Allison is mad at me.”

“Because you won’t tell her what's going on.” Diagnostics doesn’t have a patient, so Foreman isn’t really sure why Chase is still hanging out in the conference room. “Here’s an idea: talk to your wife.”

“Can’t do that to her.” He’s shaking his head back and forth when Foreman looks up. “Can’t.” He’s given up on trying to slow his speech down and is just letting it happen. It’s only Foreman in the office so he’s not worried about someone hearing him. 

“Are you okay? I know I’ve asked you that already today.” Chase nods, too fast and too frantic and his pacing seems to veer off into the crazed range again. “Right. Of course you are.”

“Sorry.” Chase knows Foreman is being sarcastic. “I can’t sit still.”

“You never sit still. I’ve known you for more than half of a decade and I have never once seen you sit still.” Chase tilts his head and seems to think about it for a minute before making a noise of agreement. 

“I can’t sit still, my brain is fried and I’m on call. Like...I’m not worried about doing my job right? You know I can do my job, I know I can do my job and that’s all that matters. But I haven’t slept since...well since.” He freezes for a moment and gives Foreman a look. “I feel like I drank way too much coffee, and I really wish it was as easy to fix.” 

“You’re on call?” That at least explains why he’s here and not at home trying to fix this shit. At Chase’s nod Foreman asks, “Should you be?”

“I just said I can do my job.” Chase snaps at him, and then starts pacing again, throwing the pill shaped ball harder between his hands. “Sorry, didn’t mean to snap at you.” He wants to say more, Foreman can tell from the way he’s biting at his lip and looking around. “I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

“Then turn the pager in and go home, you ralf on me and I’ll end you.” He doesn’t look green at all, but he does look vaguely nauseous. 

“I’m fine, it's...I need sleep.” Foreman remembers that Chase had mentioned once that he’ll get nauseous when the sleep deprivation gets too bad. “Not so bad as it could be.” The words kind of sound like they’re in the wrong order to Foreman. “So yeah, Allison is pissed off at me, I’m freaking out and I’m trying to figure out if I made the right choice taking Cuddy up on her deal.”

“What deal?” Foreman closes his laptop and leans back, trying not to get dizzy with Chase moving in his peripheral. 

“You don’t know?” He freezes for a moment again before blinking a few times and continuing. “Cuddy just transferred me back to diagnostics full time. Kind of.” He stops pacing and blows out a breath, still passing the ball back and forth in his hands. “I’m full time in diagnostics, but I’m on call one week of the month to work emergency coverage for surgery.” Which pretty much meant that if anyone came into the ER and needed emergency surgery and all of the staffed surgeons were busy, he’d have to take it. 

“Interesting.” Chase knows she must have talked to House about it, but he doesn’t really care. “So...why is your wife mad at you?”

“Aside from the obvious, because I took the offer. And because I left the house this morning without telling her. And...because I haven’t been sleeping, she’s getting annoyed because I’m never in bed in the morning.” Foreman has never been married, but he’s been in a few serious relationships where he lived in the same apartment as his girlfriend. He can see why Allison would be annoyed. “And normally...if it’s just because I can’t sleep, she doesn’t care, because I can explain myself to her. But I can’t explain myself this time.” He’s staring at the ground and tapping his heel into the carpet. “I can’t tell her...I can’t drag her into this.” 

“You dragged me in.” Foreman quips and hears Chase scoff.

“You dragged yourself in.”

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The cop who thinks he’s about to die is intriguing. His self-destructive behavior and complete acceptance that he is going to die for no other reason than family history is like a neon sign tacked to the world's largest crossword. He wants to know what's wrong with this guy, wants to figure out the puzzle. But his brain is making it very difficult to work right now, he keeps zoning out, getting stuck in loops of spiraling thoughts that would normally have him taking a 5 minute break to work through a coping mechanism in the bathroom until the spiral stops. It’s been a long time since he’s been manic and somewhat passively suicidal at the same time. It’s not a good feeling. 

He spirals so bad in a differential that he has no choice but to down a Xanax and hide in the breakroom, he can’t stop the thoughts that are swirling through his head. Screaming that he was a murderer. The worst kind of sinner. A useless waste of space. All he can see when he closes his eyes is Dibala’s blood gushing over his knuckles and his father's voice telling him it doesn’t matter if it was on purpose, he was wrong. He was wrong like he always was because he was a stupid waste of space that should have just died a long time ago. 

His eyes settle on the jar of sandwich jam someone left on the counter for just a bit too long. All it would take was a smear of it, just one smear in his mouth and he’d be gasping for air. In a few minutes it would all be over. 

Chase shakes himself. Once, then twice and huffs out a heavy breath. He has about 15 minutes until the anxiety medication kicks in and he falls asleep. He will not try to kill himself in the breakroom. He can’t, and it’s not like he has anything to write a note with right now, and he can’t do that to Allison. He didn’t leave a note last time, and he’ll never make that mistake again. Another deep breath and he takes a paper towel from the roll, folding it over twice and using it to pick up the strawberry jam jar and put it back in the communal fridge, removing it from sight and hopefully from mind. 

Lying down on the couch and trying not to make it obvious that he’s desperately holding back tears. He counts in 7’s until he falls asleep, timing his breathing and not allowing himself to move just in case his misfiring brain tries to go back to the jam jar. 

When House brings his cane down on the couch Chase comes too in a fog. It hasn’t been long enough to burn off the Xanax, but it has been long enough that his brain doesn’t immediately start spiraling again. For now at least, the intrusive thoughts stay away and Chase lets out a sigh of not-quite relief at the realization. 

Just standing in the room makes his brain speed up, and he can’t focus on anything, can barely hear House bullshitting through the blood rushing in his ears. He’s having to almost swallow air to keep breathing with some semblance of normalcy and he knows that the patient can tell something is off with him. Chase can’t put a mask over all of this, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t going to try. 

Part of him wants to go to a club, to trade a bar of his Xanax for a paper of ecstasy or a line of cocaine. To fall back into the unhealthy coping mechanisms that had colored his weekends for years. He wants to forget, if only for a few hours. He wants something other than guilt to be pressing on his chest, wants just a few hours of peace and quiet in his head. Wants to be able to walk into that one ICU room that he was so comfortable in just weeks ago without having his heart try to skip out of his chest. 

A larger part of him wants to just lay down in the corner, tile or carpet doesn’t matter, and sleep until he doesn’t wake up. But he’s not tired, he’s awake and sitting in reality and unable to look away from the train wreck of his life. He tries running, tries his safest coping mechanism and it does nothing but wake him up more and feed the energy in his limbs that has him pacing and chewing on his nails, a habit he hasn’t indulged in since University. The Ativan that he’s started taking according to the dosage again is doing nothing to shove down at the mania. He’s wholly and truly fucked. 

Chase knows he did it to himself. He was the one who made the decision to stop taking his medication. He was the one who decided to fake a lab test and commit a felony. He was the one who decided to kill Dibala. He doesn’t regret it. Of everything he questions, he knows that to be true. So, he knows he deserves to live with it. He can’t end his life because he hasn’t paid his penance for his crimes. This is his punishment. 

The cop dies and Chase is still awake when Foreman texts him. He’s been averaging a few hours every night, usually by letting the drowsiness he normally fights against from the anxiety medication take over and counting until darkness finally takes him. Allison doesn’t seem to notice that he’s waking with a gasp and his heart trying to explode just hours later. When he gets the text he gives up on sleeping. He helped House kill this guy. Just another nail in his coffin. 

He cleans the living room. And then the kitchen. And then sits in the middle of the floor when the wave of guilt he was trying to beat back hits him full force. He’s not sure how long he sits there hugging his knees to his chest and using all of the energy he has to just breath and not start rocking back and forth and sobbing until he wakes his wife up. When he finally has the ability to force himself to his feet and into the shower, the sun is starting to peak over the horizon. He lets himself add more bruises to his thighs and the tops of his knees. Allison might notice them, but he can say he tripped over something or walked into something at the hospital. She’s never questioned it before when he’s given in and hauled off on himself enough to leave marks. 

Sitting in his car outside of the ex-girlfriends house, for the first time in years, Chase prays. He prays to the God that he feels has abandoned him, and he means it. He prays and he promises, he promises that if God will help him this one last time, he’ll go back to him. He promises that he’ll pay for his sins everyday for the rest of his life if God will just help him. Chase sits in his car outside the house and prays, reciting the words that he’s known for so long but hasn’t spoken in years. It doesn’t make him feel any better than the run did earlier and after the deed is done and he’s told the woman that her ex died and her son might be in danger from the same thing, he sits in his car and cries. 

The confession booth door closes and Chase feels all of 12 years old again. He feels 12 and 15 and 17 again, shorter and smaller in the shoulders and just as unsteady as he feels right now. He admits his sins, unable to force himself through the words in the proper order, and he wants to spill everything else. To ask why he’s been cursed by God, to ask why some people get to live with their sins and move on and why he has to pay again and again. Wants to ask why he’s been paying his whole life for a sin he committed just weeks ago. Instead he doesn’t say anything after his judgement is given, but he moves the option of turning himself in to the end of the list he’s working through until he finds something that helps. 

Getting absolutely shit faced is a lot higher on the list than turning himself into the police. He leaves his phone in his car and finds a bar showing sports and finds a spot and forgets momentarily that he’s accountable to someone other than himself now. Focusing on the taste of whiskey and beer on his teeth he bounces his foot on the support beam of the bar stool and watches the football game that's playing above his head. When he uses the bar phone to call a cab hours later he is more intoxicated than he has been since his bachelor party but the guilt is pushed back and he doesn’t feel like he’s about to fall apart.

The next morning he’s hungover and depressed and Allison is pissed when she shoves a bottle of water and two Tylenol at him and says in her frustrated voice, “You know you aren’t supposed to drink on your meds.” 

“Yeah.” He mumbles, pressing a palm against his eyes and swallowing against the nausea that’s settled in. He wants to throw up, but she’ll judge him for that and he can’t deal with it right now. “I just...I needed to.”

“What’s going on with you?” She asks and settles on the other side of the couch, as far from him as she can while sitting on the same piece of furniture. 

“Nothing, just...my shit.” He takes a small sip of the water and closes his eyes. “It's bad.” He wants to tell her everything but he can’t shift his sins onto her, this is his mess to pay for. 


	14. Guilty Verdict

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He might not want to tell her but he has to eventually. It doesn't help that his therapist has him working on somethings that are really not helping with the current situation. Chase is dealing, poorly, but he's dealing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who keeps reading and reviewing, as a heads up this arch should have one more chapter, based around 'Teamwork' and then I'll be getting into the 'inevitable post-cameron divorce breakdown'. One of the first chapters and plot ideas that I had that inspired this fic is an upcoming chapter, and I am happy that it is finally on the horizon.
> 
> Also: please let me know if you would like to see more of Kevin.

Chase tries to fix the mess he’s made by throwing himself back into his less self-destructive coping mechanisms in a way that he hasn’t in more than a decade. Running and sleeping with his weighted blanket and trying his damndest to keep some semblance of a schedule doesn’t seem to be doing a whole hell of a lot, but he’s trying. He’s not acting how he does when he’s overtly manic or overwhelmingly depressed, and when Kevin asks if he’s in an episode Chase just shrugs and says he’s ‘going through it’. Kevin doesn’t look too happy with that answer. 

“Something is going on with you, if you don’t want to tell me that's fine, but take a good look at yourself and tell me you aren’t manic right now.” Kevin has always been annoyingly adept at picking up on his moods no matter how well he thinks his mask is in place. 

“I’m...coming down.” He’s not, but his mood is shifting so rapidly right now that it’s making his head swim. One day he’s fine, just anxious as hell, and the next he’s having to skip shaving because he wants to slice himself to shreds with the razor. “Last week was rough.” He can’t tell Kevin that he’s alternating between his speech being so pressured he’s mixing up words and wanting to just lay down and never get up. He’s not supposed to want to put himself into anaphylaxis with the community PB&J ingredients in the break room. 

“How rough?” He’s asking if he went back on his more frowned upon strategies.

“Nothing major. Hit myself a few times, got super drunk once.” Telling Kevin that he hit himself won’t get him in trouble. “It’s over though, just a bad week.” 

“Okay, so I’m going to ask like I do every time, why do you still feel the need to hurt yourself when things get messed up?” Kevin isn’t expecting an answer, Chase has never had one before.

“Guilt.” He closes his eyes and breathes out. “We...lost a patient and it was my fault.” He picks at his nails and starts tapping his foot. “I figured it out. It’s guilt. I make a mistake, or fuck something up,” once the words start he can’t stop them. “And then I need to be punished for it. And the guilt builds and builds until I have to do something about it.” Chase pauses for a moment to take a deep breath. “So...I hurt myself because no one else will and I need to pay for whatever I did .” Chase mumbles while staring at the ground. It’s taken him long enough to figure it out. If he wasn’t so stupid he’d have realized it years ago. 

“Okay. So, I know we’ve never talked about it, but you’ve said some stuff before and I think this is the best time to ask. Am I right in the assumption that someone, somewhere along the line, physically abused you?” Chase stops breathing. He’s not a victim and he never has been. But the part of his brain that’s educated, the doctor part, knows it's true however much he wishes it wasn’t. 

“My mum...she’d get real drunk and throw me around.” His father was so much worse, but the last thing he wants to do is talk about that. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be ready to open that can of worms. “And...before you ask, yeah...she’d latch onto any little indiscretion and beat me for it.”

“So she’d make it out that it was your fault?” Chase nods, he wants to tell Kevin that it was so much more, but he can’t force the words out. “Look, I’m not going to lie to you, I figured it out a long time ago that someone used you as their outlet at some point, but that doesn’t change who you are. It colored it, sure. Everyone is a conglomeration of traits and damage and scars that people have left on each and every one of us. It’s just another piece of the puzzle that makes you who you are, and I am very glad that you figured out the emotion behind why you feel the need to self-harm.” Kevin pauses and Chase taps his foot harder, dancing his fingers along his leg. “Do you want to stop having to fight the urge everytime something goes wrong?” 

“Almost as much as I wish I was normal.” He’s not sure if doing this while off his meds is a good idea, but he’s not sure if the conversation would ever happen with Lithium in his system.

“Then this is what's going to happen. It’s going to suck, and you’re probably not going to like the process, but you need to trust me, and we need to shift your relationship with guilt and attack the urges at their roots. It’s going to hurt, and before it gets better, it might get worse, and you need to tell me if it's too much too fast. But...we go about this the right way and...maybe you don’t want to hurt yourself after every minor issue for the rest of your life.” 

“I’d like that.” Chase breaths out, rubbing a hand at his eyes. “I’d really like that.” The guilt right now is so heavy that he’s suffocating under it, but he’s still on edge and tense and generally hypomanic. 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kevin’s not wrong in saying it's going to suck, they spend the rest of the hour ripping into some of the times he’s felt guilty when he wasn’t at fault and instead of heading back to work and the compulsively lying teenage girl he does the first intelligent thing he’s done in months and calls his wife. 

“Hey, whats up?” She knows he was at his appointment and she sounds just a bit too chipper when she answers.

“Um...I’m going to go home instead of back to the hospital unless you all desperately need me. Could you tell House?” He figures their boss won’t mind, not when he’s been urging him to get some kind of help for weeks as his job performance has fallen. “I’m fine by the way, just...kind of crashing and I’m super uncomfortable and I need a nap.” He legitimately hopes the depression stays, that he doesn’t wake up in two hours wired out of his skull and vibrating with energy. He’d much rather spend the next two or three days unable to force himself out of bed than cycle again so fast that he wants to die just to not go through it again.

“Okay, do you need anything?” Her voice softens and Chase knows that if she was here she’d be running her fingers through his hair. 

“No, I’ll see you when you get home.” Chase sighs and huffs out a breath. “Promise, I’m fine. I’m just exhausted and burnt out right now.” He knows she’ll be concerned if he doesn’t reassure her and he doesn’t need to be responsible for two thirds of the department being out of play, one third is bad enough, but he can’t do work right now. “Love you, see you later.”

“Love you too.” She hangs up before he does and Chase smiles sadly at his phone for a moment before getting in his car and heading toward home. 

  
  


He digs out the hidden sleeping pills he has in the back of his sock drawer and takes one with a bottle of water before laying down in bed under his weighted blanket. It’s just one of those days and talking about his guilt, about how his mum had used him as a punching bag for years, he’s not okay. But he’s okay enough to set up his coping mechanisms and lay down before the true horror of his homicide and everything else hits. He fingers the scar on his hip from the gin bottle and lets himself cry as he drifts off to sleep. 

“Robert.” He hears someone say his name softly and he makes a noise. “Honey I’m going to make dinner, do you want anything in particular?”

“Don’t care...sleep?” He’s still exhausted and he almost starts crying again at the relief of knowing he got more than two hours in one go. The Ambien had done its job. 

“Yeah, I’ll let you sleep for a while longer, you seem like you need it.” He nods into his pillow and pulls at the blanket that’s slid down his body, yanking the heavy fabric back up over his shoulder and letting sleep take him again.

Stumbling into the living room a few hours later Chase sees that Allison is on the couch watching some movie and reading a book. She looks up when she hears him enter the room and fixes a small smile on her face. 

“You weren’t lying about needing a nap.” He definitely feels better and smiles back at her.

“Yeah, apparently more than I thought I did.” He sits down next to her and yawns. “I know you’re going to ask so I’m just going to tell you.” 

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” Allison sets her book down and moves herself so she’s in his lap, waiting for Chase to get comfortable before doing so.

“It’s...I don’t exactly want to tell you but I probably should because it’s something that's probably going to be affecting how I act for awhile.” Getting into the deep shit, getting into this shit in particular, always messes with him. “And I don’t want you to be blindsided by it.”

“Thank you.” She lets him run his fingers through her hair, starting to separate it. Somehow he always knows when she wants him to braid her hair and tonight's no different. 

“I’m going to be working on...figuring out why I...hurt myself. And hopefully, by the end of it all...maybe it’s not as bad. Or maybe it just gets to the point that when I would be cutting myself, I’ll just hit myself and when I would be hitting...maybe I won’t be doing anything.” Chase lets out a heavy sigh and presses his forehead into the top of Allison’s head. “A long time ago I accepted that my scars are never going to go away, and that people will see them and know what they are, but...I want to not have to add anymore.”

“Robert...that’s a good thing. This is a very good thing.” She turns around and wraps her arms around his shoulders and he almost feels okay for the first time in weeks. “Just...tell me what you need and I’ll try to help.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once Allison realizes that the reason he’s been weird for weeks isn’t that he’s been digging into his own issues and that it’s a completely separate problem, she comes back at him trying to figure out what’s wrong and Chase knows she thinks he’s cheating. He knows she follows him to the gym one of the times he goes. 

Foreman tells him to talk to her, House tells him to talk to his shrink or God or whoever he’s confiding in this week and Chase...Chase just tries to not fall apart at work. The guilt of Dibala is eating at him, and if he keeps going like this on black coffee and no sleep and barely eating, he’s going to give himself an ulcer. And then that thought spirals and he’s sitting on the floor of the storage closet that House found him and Cameron in that one time, hyperventilating and thinking about Kayla and her perforated ulcer and his mistake that caused her death. 

He talks himself through the guilt for that one, saying that he’s already paid for it, but he knows he is guilty in that event. And he tries to convince himself that it's okay, that he’s allowed to make mistakes and pay for them and get over it. It doesn’t work, but it does stop the panic attack in its tracks and let him sit there for 20 minutes and just breath and try to distract himself from the unfortunate crawling under his skin than has him wanting to indulge in the urges that he’s supposed to be actively working to stop having. 

He really needs to get back on his medication.

The problem with that however, is that he’s so far past the point of being able to quickly fix it without anyone noticing that he’s terrified of the process. He’s been off of the mood stabilizer and the antidepressants for so long that going back on them will be like starting them for the first time again, except that he knows what to expect this time. He won’t be hit out of left field by the exhaustion and the fog that Lithium adjustment causes, won’t get slammed by the nausea that comes in waves until his body gets used to the medication again, unless he starts vomiting again, and then he’ll have to admit it’s something more than a long term use issue. Maybe when he finally gets back on track with his Prozac he’ll be able to stop having panic attacks again. 

He needs help with it though. But getting help with it means admitting he’s an idiot who went off his medication months ago, killed a guy and is now trying to dig into his past to maybe find some answers. It’s too much right now. He’ll deal with it later. He’s been dealing with it, and he made it through undergrad without any help, so he can make it through this. 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chase writes himself out a to-do list and on the top of it is to tell Allison what he did, after he writes it out and memorizes it and tells himself that he’s going to do everything on it, he burns the paper and sets out to do his damned job until he can start on his list. He needs to be able to do his job. That’s always the priority. 

Allison makes him tag along when she heads back to the hotel to talk to the author again, on the grounds of ‘he’s creepy and tried to flirt with me’. He’s aggravated and irritable and generally wants to hide himself off somewhere at the hospital and find a job to do and just do it. They end up arguing in the hallway and Chase wants to apologize to her, but more of him wants to punch a wall and keep up his lie. He settles for scratching his blunt nails into his forearms and counting his breaths until he calms down. He needs to tell Allison, but he needs to get a lid on his shit even more so. 

They snipe at each other for the rest of the case, and Chase gets progressively more uncomfortable in his own skin as it goes on, but he continues doing his job. It’s the most he can do right then, just put one foot in front of the other and shove everything down to deal with later and put on the best mask he has and appear to be fine. He still doesn’t regret what he did, and it’s been long enough now that he knows it is really what he thinks and not a manic thought or a colored opinion. The dictator had needed to die, and looking up news reports in secret on his breaks tells him that the country is doing better, that the genocide was avoided. He doesn’t feel proud of his actions, not even a hint of it, but he doesn’t regret it. 

His sleep pattern is more erratic than it has been in years, he’s either not sleeping at all and chugging coffee until he feels human, or he’s crashing out with no warning and waking up from nightmares just minutes or hours later. Allison comments about his caffeine consumption and how it can’t possibly be helping and Chase shrugs her off, out of all of the ways he’s tried to deal with his illness, minimizing caffeine has never been a viable option. 

He’s still cycling so rapidly that he can’t even begin to make sense of it, but luckily the intensity has settled back to something that he can work with. The intrusive suicidal thoughts calm down to where they normally sit, leaving him alone for the most part and only trying to pop up when he’s laying in bed in silence and seeing his crimes flash before his closed eyes, he’s not randomly laughing at inappropriate moments, and as long as he thinks before speaking, the pressure behind his words has calmed down to where he can negate it. 

Chase wouldn’t say he’s anywhere close to evened out, his moods are like a ping pong ball and he’s just along for the ride, but the up and down of it has at least started to bounce between the middle ground again instead of flying through the screen and plummeting to the floor in a few hours time. The panic attacks and the nearly overwhelming anxiety haven’t calmed down at all, not even with the Ativan coursing through him, but he can work with that. He can work through sweaty palms and static in the back of his head and not being able to hear through the blood rushing in his ears. He can work through the churning in his stomach and the tightness in his chest that has him half wondering if he should throw his inhaler back in his bag. 

When they go home after the case is finally over and Chase sits down on the couch, he decides to tell Allison. He needs to tell her, and he needs to do it now. He’s down, hasn’t been up at all for the last two days, and he sends out a silent prayer that he’s sure no one is listening for that he stays down, that this mess finally ends and he evens out into the depression that he can live with. 

Leaning forward on the couch with his elbows on his knees and Allison sitting next to him, Robert takes a few breaths before trying to say what he feels he should have weeks ago. “Sometimes...we lose patients.”


	15. Answers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It had taken a lot to admit he had a problem, but Robert knew he had to deal with it. So, one fateful day at university he'd sat himself down and decided to get his shit together. He had to start dealing with it all at somepoint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the absence, work has been rough and now NaNo has started so...updates to this might be sporadic for the next month. Sorry in advance. Also, here's another flashback chapter and I promise I'm working on the chapter that goes with the episode Teamwork, it's just giving me problems right now.

College (20 years old)

He’s falling apart, he can feel it inside himself. Like a pillow torn at the seams with the stuffing trying to escape. It’s terrible and there’s nothing more that he wants than it all to stop. He’s backed into a corner of his shower in the dorm, contemplating with an eerie calm if he should take the ever so available pocket knife that he’s placed on the counter and finally end the creeping misery that is his life.

It takes a long time, but he doesn’t. What he does do is find the handout that they’d all gotten at orientation about the on campus help they might be able to use if they end up in a situation such as this one. Something stops him that night, and Chase is never really sure what it is, but when he begs off class the next day and drags himself out of bed to go to the counseling center, he knows that it was the right choice. Somehow, he knows that he’ll be able to get through this. However horrid it feels right now.

The older lady at the desk gives him a small smile when she hands over the clipboard and Chase doesn’t even have the energy to fake one back at her. All it took was walking in and telling her ‘something is wrong with me’. To have her schedule him to go back and talk to a counselor within the next half hour. Chase almost cries in thanks, and that’s how he knows that something is really really wrong this time, this isn’t just a wave of depression that he’s used to dealing with.

The receptionist calls him back not 10 minutes after he turns in the survey and he can’t make eye contact as she says his name, doesn’t have the energy to hurry as she patiently holds the door open for him, doesn’t thank her because the words in his head don’t make sense. 

He leaves an hour later with a referral to the campus mental health counselor and dried salt on his face. He hadn’t admitted to almost offing himself the night before, knowing that would get him sent to the Emergency Department with a referral for in-patient care in no time at all. He doesn’t feel like doing it right now, so he figures he’s alright. Figures he’ll be alright for a bit longer, considering how long since the last time he’d wondered about killing himself and now. He can’t seem to catch his breath and he falls into a chair in the next waiting room without talking to the receptionist, burying his head in his hands to try and just Breath.

She’s nice though, and obviously a student. The receptionist comes over and offers him a paper cup of water, says that the advisor is with another student right then but she’ll let him know he has one waiting. She’s quiet but calming and Chase can't help but stutter out a thank you once he can. He’s just happy no one he knows is in the waiting room while he has his breakdown, but really...it’s been a long time coming and he knows on some level that it needed to happen. He wonders how many other students have fallen apart in this waiting room.

There’s more surveys and more crying, but this time he doesn’t get kicked out of the office. The advisor sits across from him and offers his more water, a lolly, and then sits there thoughtfully while Chase stutters out just why he’s so afraid to seek help. Why it took hitting a crisis like this to really talk to someone, to look back at the sheet of printer paper for help. 

The advisor is nice and calming and there’s a bathroom in the back of the office area where he can wash his face off before having to brave the world again. Instead of handing him a bunch of papers and telling him which office to go to next, he calls the psychiatrist first and suddenly Robert has an appointment for later that afternoon. 

There’s still more forms and surveys and he’s sure that they must know everything about him by now, but he fills them out with hands that won’t completely stop shaking, feeling like the world is falling apart at the seams.

The psychiatrist is a middle aged woman and she vaguely reminds him of his mom before it got bad. The first thing she asks is if he’s comfortable with a female doctor and he nods, more than is strictly necessary. It helps that he can’t possibly find her attractive because of her resemblance to his late mother. She doesn’t ask him any painful questions, rather she just lets him unpack the last week and spill everything that the surveys have pulled to the surface. Near the end she looks sad and sets her notebook down and Robert almost starts crying again, despite wiping his tears off his face just moments ago. 

“You know what I think?” She sounds nice, her voice is soft and she’s not attacking him, not judging him for falling apart. He looks up but doesn’t say anything, hoping his eyes convey what he doesn’t want to say. “I think you’ve been holding this all inside for a very long time,and there was one final thing that was the straw that broke the camel's back.”

“So I’m not crazy?” He knows he’s still crying and hates himself even more for not being able to stop it.

“No, I don’t think you’re crazy. But I do think you could have benefited from someone helping you sooner. Before it came to this.” 

Robert leaves the office with a prescription for antidepressants and an appointment for that thursday. He knows that the doctor doesn’t think he’s simply depressed, she’d told him so, but she needs to see how he reacts before doing anything else. Robert isn’t stupid though,and he’s a medical student, so he snags a psych book and starts looking up his symptoms. 

He knows he’s bipolar a week before she confirms it. Once he realizes it, it’s not that hard to accept, a lot easier than it thinks it should be in all honesty. And if it’ll stop his brain from malfunctioning, Robert Chase has no problem trying to medicate it into obedience. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Robert knows that this has been an issue a lot longer than he’s willing to admit to his shrink. When he showers in the morning he’ll look at the scars on his arms sometimes and he’ll Know. He’s always been messed up, has always had problems, and maybe if someone had listened when he fell apart before...maybe this wouldn’t be as much of a problem now. Maybe he’d already know how to deal with it.

It’s his second week on the antidepressants and a few days before his next appointment and Robert knows that she wants to try adding in a mood stabilizer when he feels his brain start speeding up again. But on the upside, he doesn’t want to off himself anymore so he’s calling that a win. His brain is going fast enough that he can’t keep up with it and he knows this isn’t good. He’s been through it enough over the past few years to know just how bad it can get but he’s always dealt with it before, hasn’t had a time where his brain went so fast that it was BAD since his mother died.

So he doesn’t tell his shrink. He taps his foot and swallows the energy and prays to the God that he isn’t sure will help him and he tries to run off the energy that follows him. It doesn’t really help, but he thinks that trying is better than what he did before. He lets himself flirt, and fall into bed with the girls it ends well with, and sex has always helped, it makes him feel alive, if only for the few hours he lays with them. It makes him feel alive. Like every single cell of him is on fire and electricity is flowing through him without end. He doesn’t really have to sleep, but he tries to because he knows by now that if he doesn’t sleep at all, his grades will suffer. 

The knife stays hidden in the drawer on his side of the dorm room, and his roommate isn’t complaining because Chase keeps cleaning the dorm room, because he needs to burn off the energy he has and do Something. Now that he knows what’s going on, it’s easy to see that all of these moments in his life have been manias. He figures the fact that he doesn’t empty his bank account and go bull riding in Spain means that he hangs out on the lower end of the spectrum, which is good. Really good, considering that he seems to not notice, or rather, care when he’s like this. 

When his first psychiatrist has him start taking Lithium Carbonate, Chase has a half moment's hesitation in the bathroom of his dorm where he wants to throw the pills in a drawer and never touch them, but he also fears the crash at the end of this high, and he knows that if he can stop having the highs and the horrible lows, maybe he can find peace in the middle ground. And the Lithium Carbonate is supposed to help that. He’s looked up the pharmacology, looked up the side effects and uses and dosages and generally done his research. He’s also found out that being on antidepressants is probably why he’s so High right now. Apparently bipolar individuals should not only be on antidepressants because it can trigger manias. Chase figures that it’s not a huge deal for him, since his manic episodes seem to just be heightened productivity and sex drive with a little bit of self destruction thrown in for good measure instead of the full blown near-psychcosis that it could be. He prays his thanks for that. At least if he’s going to be fucked up, it could be worse. He can still complete his degree as long as he doesn’t try to off himself again.

He’s supposed to tell the doctor if he wants to kill himself again. He didn’t tell her that he has wanted to before though, so maybe he’s just supposed to tell her if he’s suicidal, she doesn’t need to know that it’s gotten to the point before so many times that he’s come up with different ways to describe wanting to die. Chase thinks he's entitled to have at least some secrets and if that secret is the details behind his overdose five years ago, he'll keep his mouth shut.

No one needs to know that. And his shrink hasn’t noticed his scars yet, so he’s calling that a win.

He takes the Lithium because he never in his life wants to feel like he did sitting on the floor of the shower with his pocket knife again. He never wants to feel that horrible again.


	16. Teamwork

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to present time.  
> The morning after Robert tells Allison what he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the late update, life hasn't been good lately and I'm trying to get better about updating this. 
> 
> Let me know how bad it is in the comments.

Chase doesn’t sleep after he tells Allison what he’s done, even though his body is exhausted and his limbs feel like lead. His brain is going a million miles an hour and playing the conversation he’d had with his wife over and over on a loop. He lets himself suffer through it though, knowing he deserves it after his actions and hiding them from her. He could knock himself out pretty easily, could at least medicate himself enough to help quell the anxiety that has his hands shaking and his chest tight and his stomach cramping. He deserves to suffer through the wait until morning when her judgement is clear. 

By the time Allison wakes up he’s already showered and half dressed, leaning on the counter in the kitchen and waiting for the coffee pot to be done brewing, if today was any other day he’d call in to work. Say he had food poisoning or something, he’s so on edge he thinks he might actually be past the brink instead of just teetering on it. 

And then she says the words that have his stomach plummeting and his heart skipping and makes his knees weak enough that he’s glad he’s leaning on the counter so he doesn’t hit the tile floor. They’re okay. And when she says they need to move, need to leave New Jersey and find somewhere else and they need to do it fast? Chase agrees in half a heartbeat without even processing the words. She could be asking for anything right now and he’d give it to her. 

Chase spends the day painfully, acutely aware of himself and everything around him. It happens sometimes, and he was honestly expecting it to happen at some point with everything that’s happened in the past few weeks, but being overly conscious of his own body is just too much that day. It’s like he can feel each and every cell in his skin touching each other, like his brain is one big charged taser ready to fire.

Cleaning out his locker for the second time is weird. The deja vu more intense than the crawling under his skin and while Allison isn’t looking he pockets one of the back up anxiety meds he keeps in his locker. Today is not the day to have a full blown panic attack in the storage room, and that’s exactly what will happen if he doesn’t stop the anxiety soon. 

It doesn’t help that he can feel the rampant unhinged anger on the edge of his senses, it's another thing that happens occasionally. Another symptom of the disorder that colors his life. He can tell it's coming, and it's the absolute last thing he needs right then, he’s on thin ice with Allison. Ice so thin it may as well be the spring thaw, and Foreman keeps looking at him like he’s about to shatter into a thousand pieces. Every time he catches Foreman’s eye, Chase has to bite his lip to try and avoid snapping at him. 

When Chase gets angry he gets mean. He takes all the little things he’s observed about people over time and uses them to get under their skin. His anger isn’t violent, but it’s volatile and sharp and effective. His comments become cutting knives and if he lets it go too far, he almost enjoys watching people getting cut down by words. 

Chase absolutely hates it. He hates getting angry like that, when it’s not something that will blow over or calm down because it’s not environmental. It’s not the people around him that he’s mad at, or the situations he’s in, he’s just mad without a cause so he takes it out on everyone around him. He can’t let it take over, not now and preferable not ever but especially right now. 

Next week, he tells himself. Next week he’s going to tell Allison that he’s off of his medication and needs help to get back on track. It should coincide perfectly with seeing a new psychiatrist in Chicago and having to play that game of ‘this is my damage and this is what helps’. It’s the worst part of moving. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

House pushes his buttons, it’s what he does. And with the impending anger trying to break through the carefully constructed mask he’s got plastered on his face, Chase is proud of himself for holding it together when his boss tries to set him off. 

But House is right, and Chase knows it. When Allison has a chance to sit down with herself and realize exactly what he did, when she takes in the full implications of his crimes, she’ll freak. Of course she’ll try not to let him know that, but he’ll be able to see it. And it’ll cause tension, and he’ll end up cycling into her least favorite moods because he’s panicking about it and then she’ll use that against him and get what she wants no matter what that is. Chase has no idea if it’ll hit her today or in 20 years but he does know one thing. He loves her more than he thought was possible and he’s going to do his damndest to make it work. 

When he tells Allison he doesn’t regret his actions, it’s the truth, he just needs time to explain that to her. Time when House isn’t screwing with them and trying to set up a new team now that they’ve put in their resignations and he has to fill their slots. 

It doesn’t help that Chase can almost feel Foreman breathing down his neck as well, and he’s still overly aware of his own body. It’s like when the dissociation falls away, like he’s all one big exposed nerve. It's irrational, and Chase knows that, but it doesn’t make it feel any less like everyone is staring at him. It doesn’t help that he’s utterly exhausted too, but as they work their final Diagnostics case and House tries to pit them against each other, Chase just feels more and more exposed. He knows that Allison is still reeling from his confession and he tries to hold it together as much as he can for her and her alone. He couldn’t give less of a shit about himself right now, he just needs her to understand and to be okay. 

\-----------------------------------------

“Foreman, stop staring at me.” Chase monotones in the conference room once it’s just the two of them. It takes most of his concentration and willpower not to snap at the neurologist. 

“I’m not staring.” For a split second Chase feels his heart plummet again, wonders for a flash of a moment if he’s being paranoid before pushing back at the wall of doom and glaring at Foreman. “You good?”

“I’m fine.” He knows he sounds on edge, but it’s better than the anger he’s pushing down so hard it feels like it's burning him. “And...Allison knows now, and we’re moving to Chicago. She called a few hospitals at lunch, got an offer from Methodist for a senior attending in their ER. And I’m sure I can find an NICU slot at worst.” 

“If that's what's best, then you two do it.” Chase doesn’t have the mental stamina right then to jump through the hoops of that and decides to just scoff an answer. “You’d really go back to ICU for her?” That’s what Foreman is stuck on?

“Of course. I’d do anything for her.” And he knows it's true as he says it. “And...ICU was the first place I ever felt like I belonged, maybe it's time I go back.” His surgical certifications were numerous, and Chase knows he’d be able to find a job as a surgeon at most hospitals, but the idea of working in an ICU again wasn’t a bad one. 

“Fair enough.” Foreman hesitates, ”Look, are you alright? Somethings telling me to ask and I’m not about to ignore it since you were falling apart last week. And you just admited to murder to your wife, that can’t feel good.” 

“I’m fine.” He says in the same monotone as before. “I can do my job, whatever that job is.” He wants to turn the conversation around, wants to stab at Foreman with the insults that come so easily when he’s like this. Wants to let out the anger inside of him and lash out at someone, something. 

He walks out of the room instead, the only indicator of his anger the way he slams the file shut and drops it on the table. 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------

He slams his palm into the brick wall of the locker room, wanting nothing more than to scream. He repeats the action, feeling the stinging where the contact was made and breathing out in a huff. The anger is settling in and Chase knows he needs to get a handle on it, but there’s much going on right now to be in a full adjustment phase. That’s what next week will bring, and he’s already scared of it. Terrified, if he’s not lying to himself. Allison has been through so much with him, has accepted so much for this relationship, and here he is having committed a murder and about to drop a bomb on her. 

He doesn’t deserve her. Chase knows that, has known it for years. Someone like him doesn’t deserve someone like her. She’s perfect in every way and he’s a mess. He slams his palm into the wall again, purposely not closing his fist so the chances of actually hurting himself are lower. He has to be careful of that when he gets angry. He’s punched a wall before and fractured his hand and not noticed for days because the pain didn’t matter under the suffocating blanket of red. 

Chase realizes that he has to do something about this whole situation. He loves Allison and he knows he always will, but he can’t get blindsided by her realizing the full horror of his homicide in 20 years when they own a house and a dog or two and maybe have kids. He has to make her realize it now, to see how she reacts. He has to put his foot down on this impromptu move and force her to process this.

Maybe it’ll all work out fine. Maybe he tells House he wants to stay on the team and Allison accepts it and then they work everything out and they move to Chicago in a few months. 

That’s what he tells himself anyway, before he settles down on House’s front steps. He tells himself that he can handle this, can handle himself. That yes, he’s angry and probably a bit manic and spiralling into the dark place, but he can handle it. He’s told Allison what he did and she accepted it, at least on the surface after one night to think it over. He isn’t in jail, and he doesn’t think she’ll turn him in even if she decides that his crimes weren’t acceptable. He can't see her doing that to him, no matter how much she could ever hate him. 

When he tells House that he wants to stay, his boss seems to take the answer at face value before he fixes Chase with a look reserved for when it’s just the two of them. 

“I’m handling it.” Chase answers the unspoken question. 

“Didn’t say you weren’t, but what happens when this blows up in your face?” House is probably expecting some cracks to form, and he’s seen Chase off of his medication before. Hell, the older doctor might even be contemplating making him pee in a cup again to see if he’s been going that route again. 

“I don’t know. But I’ll deal with it, whatever happens. You know that.” He doesn’t look up from his shoes, focusing on a speck on the concrete steps and breathing evenly to keep the rage inside as much as he can. It’s not out of control yet. 

“You're not denying that it’s going to blow up in your face?” Chase shrugs, still staring at the ground. 

“Truth?” He lets the question hang for a minute. “I don’t have the energy to argue it. I’m more anxious than I think I’ve ever been, I’m cycling so quickly I can’t tell up from down, I haven’t slept in two days and my head feels like it’s about to explode.” He whispers the confession, still staring at the concrete step. “I let myself get angry? It’s going to take over, so I’m trying to...keep it as even as I can.” He doesn’t mention being off of his medication, knowing that House will find out eventually, but right now isn’t the time. “Have a good night House.” He shoves himself off of the stairs and walks away, ignoring the fact that he doesn’t hear a door open behind him, meaning that House is staring at him as he disappears down the dark street. 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Telling Allison that he wants to stay, that he wants to remain on the team is one of the hardest things he’s ever done. 

And then she breaks his heart in a locker room. And he follows her home like a lost puppy, a thick haze of hatred settling over him. At least now he knows what he’s angry at. He’s angry at himself, for pretending this would work. For lying to himself and convincing himself he deserved better than to die alone. 

There’s tears on her face as she puts some of her things into a suitcase and promises to send for the rest of it. She’s going to her parents home for now, she tells him and Chase just nods. She says his name, his first name, a name that hasn’t felt like his in a long time and was just starting to again, and then there’s more tears in her eyes as she hugs him goodbye. 

He can’t even bring himself to hug her back. He wants to, he wants to gently take her wrist and beg her to stay, wants to grovel on his knees and plead and beg and wants her to Stay. But he doesn’t move, even as the front door closes, all he can do is stare at nothing and try to keep breathing. The door closes and the first tear falls, and Chase feels the last part of himself that was whole shatter into a million pieces. Dust. 


	17. Grey Scale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cameron is gone, and Chase finally lets himself get angry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to every single one of you who commented or Kudos'd or even just read the last chapter. I'm sorry this one took so long to get out and to be entirely honest I'm still not very happy with it and have been debating posting it for days.
> 
> Sorry if it sucks.

He isn’t sure if he wants to scream and cry and break everything or to sit here until this all ends. Until this is all over. It has to be a dream, a nightmare. So he decides it's easier to just not have to think, and Chase takes a deep breath, tears still running down his face and salt on his lips and lets the anger out. He’s home alone, so no one will get hurt. 

\------------------------------------------------------------------

He remembers bits and pieces of it, remembers hitting himself until his legs bruised and ached and he reveled in it. Remembers throwing the potted cactus at the wall and watching as the pot shattered and spilled dirt on the floor. Remembers throwing everything he can at the walls, remembers his phone making it through the back window somehow.

And he remembers the feeling of wilting into the floor in the living room. He didn’t touch the bedroom at all, only the living room and kitchen and himself. He remembers falling to the floor and pressing his shoulders into the side of the heavy wooden bookshelf and hugging his knees and crying. 

At some point Chase makes it back to the couch and falls asleep after kicking his shoes onto the carpet and completely forgetting to set an alarm for the morning. When he wakes up there’s the first hint of sun coming through the windows and he lets out a groan before rolling over and desperately trying to remember where his phone is. He has to call into work or find it to see if Allison called.

It takes more than 15 minutes for him to drag himself off the couch and go look for his cell, and by then he has decided to call into work for the day, just getting off of the couch was too much effort and looking around the house he realizes he’ll have to spend at least some time cleaning up the destruction he left behind the night before. He’s not angry anymore though, which feels like it might be a good thing, and he doesn’t feel manic, at least not that he can tell. 

It’s a different feeling, and one that he is intimately familiar with, the fatigue and the way tears start spilling down his face from just thinking about having to go into work. Depression cycle, and a bad one at that if he’s this messed up from just one night of it setting in. 

After finding his phone and staring at it while sitting on the back patio for longer than he should he calls House. Knowing the chemical reactions that are causing his inability to control his emotions doesn’t help. He knows he’s being ridiculous, but he can’t change the way his brain is wired. He’s tried. 

“I’m sick, not coming in.” He says when his boss answers. 

“Yeah, sure you are. I know what Cameron told you last night.” Chase can’t seem to find the words to answer it and he just sighs and drops his head onto his knees, the effort of making the phone call almost more than he has the energy for then. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

"Won’t.” Is what he settles on, closing his eyes against the too bright sunshine. He wants nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep until this nightmare is over. 

“You forget that I’ve seen your arms. I mean it, don’t do anything stupid.” Chase realizes as his boss says it that he’s not entirely opposed to adding more right now, even with the bruises from a few hours ago still forming, but he knows he won’t. Not then at least. 

“I promise not to do anything stupid. Can I go back to bed now?” He knows he sounds exhausted and he wants to lay back onto the concrete, however Chase isn’t sure he’ll get up anytime soon if he does. 

“Good.” House seems to hesitate before continuing. “Tomorrow be in by 9.” And with that he hangs up the phone. 

He makes it back into the house after an indeterminate amount of time and changes from his work clothes into the softest pair of sweatpants and oldest t-shirt he has, curling up in bed under all of the blankets and with tears spilling down his face. He can’t stop them and letting himself cry at least helps a little bit. He’s not numb if he’s crying, even if the emotions are just way too much to handle. 

When he finally convinces himself to crawl out of bed it’s late in the afternoon and his phone has been buzzing for the last hour. He sees that the messages are from Foreman and decides to deal with them later before making it to the kitchen and starting the coffee pot, thinking that maybe it will help. Chase knows that it won’t, knows that all coffee is going to do is make it harder to fall asleep the next time he runs out of energy, but he doesn’t know what else to do. 

He could start taking his medication again, but he threw the Lithium away into the amnesty box at the hospital and he knows better than to take his antidepressants without the mood stabilizer, no matter how much he knows that right now, that this listless numbness is the depression making itself known. He has to keep telling himself to not just screw himself over worse by starting his medication out of the blue without thinking. Or better yet, without telling Kevin or Putman. He needs to fix his shit, but first he needs to drink as much coffee as it takes to give himself the energy needed to at least partially fix his living room. 

He’s sitting on the floor surrounded by dropped books an indeterminate amount of time later when he hears his phone ring from the kitchen where he’d left it. He lets it ring. And ring again, and then there's knocking at the door. Someone heard the destruction, they must have. And they’re here to figure out what happened. His chest starts getting tight again and the tears he’d finally gotten to stop fill his eyes. In a split second he goes from slowly moving the books around to a complete mess again. The part of him still thinking tells him it’s probably his anxiety mixing with the other shit and cascading downwards. Most of him just doesn’t care and wants to feel okay again. 

“Chase! Answer the door!” He isn’t expecting Foreman’s voice. “I will break this damn thing if I have to!” He yells again and Chase tries to respond, but his throat hurts and he can’t force the words out. Doesn’t even know what he’d say past a choked sob. He’s nearly glued to the floor surrounded by the mess he made.

He hears the nob turn and the hinges squeak like they always do and the only thing he can think is that Allison didn’t lock the door when she left last night. “Chase?” He hears Foreman say his name again, but it’s different this time. “Chase what happened?” There’s a shadow in front of him and the one corner of his brain still working in the present provides the answer that it's his coworker crouching down in front of him. 

“She-” he can barely form the single syllable. “She’s gone.” He feels fresh tears roll down his face. “Left.”

“Chase look at me please.” His tone is hard and just slightly apprehensive. “Look at me.” He flicks his eyes just barely upward, chest tight with Too Much. “You don’t have to talk, but I need you to nod yes or no.” Foreman pauses. “Did you hurt her?” Chase flinches. Hard.

“No.” He finds himself mumbling the word over and over again even though he knows it's not true. He didn’t touch her, he’d never have touched her, but he broke her trust. Shattered her picture of him and the world. He hadn’t physically hurt her, but he’d caused her pain anyways. 

“Okay. Good. Did you hurt yourself?” He flinches again, but can’t answer. His refusal is enough for Foreman it seems. “Bad enough to need medical attention?” 

He shakes his head ‘no’ and tries to force the words out. Tries to focus on anything that isn’t his own head right now. “Just bruises.” He whispers, shaky and uncertain of himself. “Why...are you here?”

“Cameron called and asked me to check on you. She sounded like she was crying and I couldn’t get a hold of you by calling. So I drove over and it looks like a fucking tornado ripped through your house. So tell me, what happened and why did your wife call me crying?” Foreman sounds horribly angry, but the hesitation is still there. Like he’s afraid Chase is going to blow up on him too. 

“Irreconcilable differences.” He whispers, feeling like his body is on a different planet than the rest of the room. 

“Shit man...okay.” Foreman pauses and Chase looks up just enough to make eye contact for a split second before flicking his eyes back down. “What do I need to do to help you right now?” 

“I don’t-” he cuts himself off with a huff of air and bites his lip. “I don’t know. This doesn’t happen.” Foreman lets him stumble through the words and doesn’t press, just settles onto the floor the rest of the way.

“How about this then, do you need to go to the hospital?” Chase is shaking his head ‘no’ before Foreman finishes the question.

“No.” It's the steadiest word he’s said since this secondary breakdown started. “No.” He repeats, still shaking his head. 

“Are you sure?” Chase nods, takes as deep a breath as he can manage and counts to 10 before speaking.

“I’m not hallucinating, or suicidal, or homicidal and I don’t plan on hurting myself anymore than I already have.” Being a doctor doesn’t help when he’s lying to people about just how bad it can get sometimes, he knows exactly what answers they want to hear. Has been through the same training, but he doesn’t lie to Foreman. 

“You did hurt yourself though, and that’s enough to be cause for concern. Especially in someone prone to self harming behaviors.” Chase scoffs lightly, hates when he has to hear the clinical terms in regards to himself. 

“Foreman...if I went to the ER everytime I wanted to hurt myself I’d never escape.” He’s not sure why he’s being so honest, but words are coming easier and he’s too tired to lie or cover up anything. “I’m working on it but...today was too much.” He knows that half a decade ago he’d be bleeding right now, figures that even a year ago would have much the same answer. “I-” he swallows and takes another deep breath. “It’s a form of mood regulation. We both know I need that sometimes.” 

“Yeah...so what do I do right now?” Chase has stopped shaking,and he seems almost early calm compared to just a few minutes ago, but Foreman is still worried.

“I...I need to clean this up.” He seems to take in the destruction for the first time. “Can I tell you something?” He falls back onto the comfortable phrase. 

“Sure.” Foreman nods and Chase copies the movement, staring at the ground again before tightening his arms around his legs. 

“I’ve never...been afraid of myself when this happens. I think I might be now.” He whispers with no idea why he’s telling Foreman of all people, but he has to get it out. Has to let the thought escape. “I feel like I’m falling apart, and I’m so fucking tired.” Chase runs his hands through his hair and yanks at the roots for just a moment to ground himself. “So fucking tired.” He feels the tears start going down his face again.

“What’ll help you right now?” He feels Foreman put his hand on his shoulder, the weight feels good though. Grounding. 

“I don’t know.” It’s the first time he’s answered the question that way. But Chase has no idea what else to say, his brain is a grey haze of nothingness and even trying to count to 10 and close his eyes isn’t helping. All he can focus on is the hand on his shoulder. “I can’t think.”

“Okay.” His coworker pauses and Chase hears him sigh heavily. “Okay, here’s the plan. If in an hour you’re still this out of it, we’re going to the hospital, but I know you have anxiety, and I’m willing to try and wait it out in case this is just you on the verge of a panic attack. You have a Xanax script right?” Chase nods slowly, fear prickling even more at the thought of going to the hospital. “When’s the last time you took one?”

“Yesterday.” He mumbles quietly.

“Think that might help?” 

Chase nods, and later when he can articulate it better, he thanks Foreman for filling in the gaps in his brain cells. He almost tells the neurologist that he’s off of his medication, almost finally tells someone, but he bites his lip. Adding that to the mess that is the last 24 hours would be too much. He can’t do that to Foreman. He’s not even really sure Foreman doesn’t still hate him.

“Okay...I’m dreading this question but...have I proved myself lucid enough?” Chase asks quietly while he runs his fingers over the spine of the book in his hands. It’s a worn copy of Gulliver’s Travels that he’d picked up from the bookstore in the airport before his first flight out to the states. The book isn’t exactly a memento, God knows he reads fast enough sometimes that he goes through books like coffee, but he’d thought of the question while placing it back on the shelf and he’s wondering if he does end up in the ER if he’d get fired. 

“Enough so that I’m not worried you’re about to rip your house apart again.” Chase can’t do much more than nod, still running his fingers along the book. “Do you think you’re okay?”

“Truth? No, but I think I’m okay enough.” He doesn’t think he’ll be actually okay for a while, not after this. “I think that’s allowed though.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right there.” Foreman pauses. “Grab some clothes, I might not be forcing you to go to the ER, but I’m not comfortable leaving you here alone.” 

“I’m fine.” Chase mumbles and shoves the book into place, picking up the next few from where they’ve stacked them on the floor. 

“And I’m sure you would be.” He sounds condescending, but only slightly. “But..play it safe?”

“I’ll grab some stuff.” Chase says quietly, understanding where Foreman is coming from and too Tired to argue. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m the one insisting you sleep on my couch tonight.” Chase nods, not looking over at his coworker, unable to force himself to look and see what must be pity on his face. “You...should probably call your therapist right?”

“I’ve got an appointment in three days, I’ll talk to him then.” He mumbles, silently telling himself that he’ll out himself then. He’ll tell Kevin he’s off his medication and has been for months. “Foreman…” He hesitates.

“Yeah?” Comes the question as he shoves the last book back into place. 

“Can I tell you something?” He asks, just to give himself a second. He sees Foreman move slightly from the corner of his eye and assumes he’s nodding. “The reason I’m so off...why I’m being weirder than normal…” He takes a breath, tries to not start crying again. “I’m off my meds, and I have been for months.”

“Chase...why would you…?” Foreman trails off before taking a loud breath. “Okay. Okay, that makes sense. But why?”

“I...kept throwing up, could barely drag myself out of bed as it was, cut down the lithium to half...that worked for awhile but...kept getting sick, stayed depressed as shit.” Once he starts saying it, everything comes out at once and he sits heavily on the couch, still refusing to look the other man in the eye. “It was either be depressed as shit, or be hazy and tired and nauseous and still just as fucked up.” 


	18. It All Comes Crashing Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The cat is out of the bag, Foreman knows what's been going on, Cameron is gone. And Chase just wants to not exist on this plane anymore, he knows the disaster is his fault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No New Warnings however: Warning for discussion of suicide and self harm (mostly reference).   
> AKA nothing that hasn't come up before in this fic, however, warnings do apply for this chapter (nothing graphic).
> 
> I am so sorry for how long this took to post, I'm still not entirely happy with this chapter and decisions that I made in writing and posting the previous chapter caused me to change the direction of the rest of this fic. Hopefully the next chapter doesn't take a whole month to write, however no promises on updates right now because my work schedule is chaotic and I just started school again (whoa! online college is Terrifying for someone with an intense fear of failure)

It’s about a 10 minute drive from Chase’s house to Foreman’s and Chase finds himself leaning his head against the passenger side window and trying to keep his breathing even. The urge to cry, the nearly overwhelming pressure in that space behind his tongue...he’s tired of it all. 

“I’m sorry.” Chase mumbles as he feels the car move into traffic. “My disaster is interfering with your life now.” 

“Your disaster has been interfering with my life for the last month.” Foreman says quickly. “Speaking of…” he hesitates, “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to but...how long have you been off your meds?”

“Fully?” Chase pauses, taking a deep breath to try and settle his fried nerves. “Oh you’re gonna hate me.” He mumbles, staring at the passing street lights. “About a month before House came back.”

“Holy shit.” Foreman whistles. “I didn’t even notice anything was up except for the last few weeks.”

“Not your fault.” Chase huffs out a breath, watching the glass fog. “I deal...relatively well the majority of the time, even when I’m being an idiot.” He’s always been able to temper it down for everyone else, even when he’s at his worst he can put on a mask and pretend most of the time. “House didn’t even notice this time.” He adds as they stop at a light. 

“You know...you don’t have to pretend to be fine all the time.” Chase can’t help but laugh at that.

“Yeah I do. Just...look at what happens when I don’t. You feel the need to babysit me.” Chase says, glancing over at his coworker.

“Look...I’m going to tell you something and I really need you to not tell anyone okay?” Foreman looks at him, eyes dead serious.

“I promise.” Chase says quietly right before Foreman looks back at the road. 

“After Kutner...I can’t do that again. I can’t find another coworker dead like that. And...sitting in your apartment, knowing the statistics, knowing that you are not okay right now...I couldn’t risk it.” Foreman pauses for a moment and Chase looks down at his hands in his lap. “All I could think about was finding you like I found him.”

“Foreman, I am so sorry that me being a mess put you through that. And...just so you know, I’d never do that to you or to anyone else.” He trails off at the end, thinking about just how close it’s gotten before. 

“You can’t promise that.” Foreman snaps.

“Yeah...I can.” He keeps staring at his hands. “I can’t promise that I won’t, at some point, hurt myself. I mean, last night happened. And...I can’t promise that I won’t...get to that point again, but I can promise that I’ll try my damndest to not give in.” It’s been a struggle before, and Chase knows it probably will be again, likely sooner than later with how he’s been feeling. “Not again.” He whispers, then drags in a breath as the memory of just how  _ shitty _ he’d felt for so long. 

“Again?” Foreman asks in his low tone reserved for when he’s trying to figure out if a patient is lying. It makes Chase feel like a bug under a magnifying glass. 

“Yeah.” He thinks for a moment. “Sorry, I figured you’d...assume that by now, most people do after they’ve caught a glimpse of my arms.” Chase pulls at his hands awkwardly for a moment. He’s not particularly self conscious about his scars, but occasionally when new people notice them, he’ll get uncomfortable with them, it’s why he doesn’t wear short sleeves anymore unless he’s actively working out or at home. “I’ll tell you if you want, it was so long ago that it doesn’t really...I mean obviously it matters in the grand scheme of things but...It doesn’t bother me to talk about it now.” When Foreman doesn’t immediately protest to hearing the details, Chase sucks in a breath and starts tapping his right foot against the floor mat. “I was 15 and...I OD’d on sleeping pills in a park.” He yanks at his fingers again. “I had been...on the edge of it for a really long time and it was just...too much.” He shrugs, tries to keep himself from starting to cry. He thinks the only reason he isn’t is the anxiety medication that he’d taken back at his house.

“Was that when you got help?” He knows what Foreman must be thinking, and Chase knows that he’d had a relatively early presentation. 

“No.” Chase sees Foreman look over at him. “I uh...had already been evaluated once...situational anxiety.” He wishes he hadn’t lied then, wishes he’d told the pediatric psychiatrist everything instead of being terrified of his fathers reaction. “Truth?” Chase asks quietly, waiting for Foreman’s nod. “I didn’t get evaluated after...my father treated the incident at home.” That room had become his prison for those weeks. 

“Wait...what?” Shock colors Foreman’s voice. “Not even taking into consideration that this is about the person sitting in my passenger seat, what the fuck?” Foreman starts rambling, “A teenager with a previously identified anxiety disorder does...what you did, and...doesn’t get treated? God I knew your dad was a dick but holy shit.” 

“I was an embarrassment.” Chase answers quietly. It had been a long time ago when he’d talked the incident through with his therapist, who had said pretty much the same thing in more words. “He didn’t want his reputation to suffer.” It takes a few deep breaths to get himself back in check this time. “And that's how I ended up in London, far enough away to not embarrass him.” 

\----------------------------------------------------

When they get to Foreman’s apartment the tension from the car ride has dissipated and Chase is so burnt that he thinks he could sleep for 20 hours straight. He ends up crying his way through a shower before curling up on Foreman’s couch under borrowed blankets. 

He wakes up an hour before his alarm goes off with his heart in his throat and the sweat soaked blankets tied around him in the annoyingly familiar way that tells him he was thrashing around. He doesn’t remember what the nightmare was about but as his heart rate slows back to a semblance of normal, Chase is at least thankful that it doesn’t seem like he was too loud.

Digging around in his bag for a moment while trying to catch his breath the rest of the way, Chase digs out his anxiety meds and dry swallows a tablet. Once the office opens he’ll have to call his therapist, even though his normal monthly appointment is supposed to be the day after tomorrow. He’ll have to see Putman instead of Kevin, and he should probably tell them that before showing up and having the ‘I’m an idiot, I’m off my meds’ conversation again. 

The more daunting necessary task of the day is going to be admitting to House that he’s been an idiot for months. Chase buries his face in his hands and tangles his fingers in his hair, yanking just hard enough that it hurts. 

He’s still sitting there when Foreman wakes up and turns the coffee pot on. 

“You going to work today?” He hears as the coffee pot gurgles.

“Yeah.” Chase says, running his fingers through his hair and then over his thighs before standing. “Is it alright if I use the bathroom to change?”

“Of course.”

When he gets back into the living room there’s a mug sitting on the counter that his coworker nods at. 

“I’m...sorry about last night.” Chase is utterly exhausted and he knows the coffee won’t do much. He also knows it’s only going to get worse in the coming weeks as he readjusts to being on medication again. 

“It’s fine, like you said, you would probably have been fine alone at your house but, I was just concerned.” Foreman drains his own coffee cup and sets it in the sink. “I can drop you off at your place if you want to drive yourself in. And...if you need a place to stay, you’re welcome here.”

“Thanks...I might have to take you up on that depending on what my shrink says. I’ll let you know.” Chase knows it’s likely that it will be highly recommended that he stay with someone while in the adjustment phase, especially if it’s not his old meds that he ends up on. 

“One question.” Foreman says while grabbing his keys and Chase grabs the backpack he’d thrown clothes into last night. “If you knew you were experiencing symptoms of lithium toxicity...why didn’t you just tell someone that?” 

“Because...I was already on half of what I had been on, and...realistically speaking I was probably just scared that nothing else would work as well.” He’s thought of it a lot recently in preparation for finally admitting to the idiocy before he truly goes off the rails. “And...honestly didn’t help that I was like...massively depressed at the time. Better to just be depressed as shit than nauseous and even more tired and just as sad all the goddamn time.” There’s a large portion of him that’s terrified by the idea that he might not be able to take the one mood stabilizer that has ever worked for him, Chase isn’t sure if it’s his rational brain, or the part that’s mostly scrambled eggs causing the fear. 

“That’s reasonable I guess.” Foreman says, hesitating like he has more to say. “In the car yesterday I told you that you don’t have to pretend to be fine all the time and I meant that. I understand that you might have to at work, but just...you can tell me if you’re not.” 

“Thanks...I mean, I really already have been over the last few weeks. You called me out when I didn’t realize how weird I was being and I appreciate that.” As they leave Foreman’s apartment, the subject is dropped. 

\----------------------------

It’s not an extremely busy morning, but Chase knows that Taub and Thirteen are surprised to see him and not Cameron. No one outright asks, but he knows they want to. It’s probably obvious from how quiet and stuck in a book he tries to stay all day. When the others finally take lunch, Chase goes into the smaller office where House is sitting at his desk, actually working for once since he has his reading glasses on. 

“I’m going to need a few days.” Chase says quietly, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall next to the door. 

“A few days off or a few days to be weird?” House asks, taking off his glasses and looking at his employee. 

“Preferably a few days off, I have vacation days to use.” Chase pauses, huffs out a breath and looks down at his feet. “I’m just going to come out about this right now, I’ve been off my medication again for the last few months, and I really probably shouldn’t be working while getting back on them.” He says it quickly, not looking up. 

“Seriously?” House says, obviously annoyed with him and Chase feels his chest try to tighten. The last thing he needs right now is to let his anxiety run away from him. “Wow, you know when I asked if you were okay to be working when you came back to the department, that would have been the time to admit this.”

“Hasn’t affected my work, has it?” Chase knows it hasn’t, even when he’s as hypomanic as he gets, he knows when it starts to affect his job performance. “I just need a few days to figure everything back out, if you need me to work through it I can, but Lithium adjustment knocks me on my ass.” 

“I remember.” House pulls open the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet next to his desk and pulls a plastic cup out. “If this comes back positive for what it did last time, you’re fired.” It’s a urinalysis cup and Chase runs his hand over his face tiredly. 

“It won’t, the only thing I’ve been taking is anti-anxieties.” He hadn’t gone off the rails this time, hadn’t been finding himself in clubs and loud bars. Hadn’t been letting himself go down that road, and in a way, Chase is glad he hasn’t now that it’s come full circle. “There’s going to be a frankly ridiculous amount of benzos in my system but you can check the prescriptions if you want, I’ve been having a lot of issues with my anxiety even before I decided to be a dumb ass.” Chase admits, knowing he’s never explicitly told his boss that he’s got anxiety on top of his bullshit. It’s like a switch in his brain flicks in that moment and suddenly the waves of self-loathing that have been strangely calm this whole time are unleashed. 

“How much is a ridiculous amount?” House throws the plastic cup at Chase and he catches it, rolling it between his hands for a moment.

“Twice as much Xanax as I was taking when you hired me originally. Sometimes more if it’s a bad day. Got put on Ativan late last year.” There’s a brick wall forming itself, part of him knows it's ridiculous to think, but the other, stronger, part of him is yelling ‘ _ SHUT UP BEFORE YOU GET YOURSELF FIRED _ ’. 

“So it is a secondary condition then, not a symptom of the bigger problem?” House seems legitimately interested instead of pissed off and it doesn’t make sense with the spiral Chase’s brain has started to go down. 

“Apparently. So...can I take a few days to deal with my shit?”  _ I’m so fucking stupid _ . Chase thinks.  _ Why did I ever even ask _ ?

“I’d say yes, but we just got a patient. If you really do need to take yourself off of it Chase, do it before I have to. Unfortunately, I need your brain here, malfunctioning or not.”  _ Of course, I knew he would say that _ .  _ Why am I so fucking stupid, I know better.  _ “You call your shrink?”

“Yeah, was about to ask if I can skip out early.” His legs are tingling, the obnoxiously familiar blanket of brain wool that makes seeing anything as better than  _ terrible _ is setting in. He starts picking at the edge of the label on the specimen cup in his hands. 

“Drug test first.” House grabs his cane and stands and Chase goes back to staring at the floor, trying to will the mask back in place as his entire body starts tingling. It’s exactly what happens before he ends up giving in to temptation and cutting, but he only has to make it a few hours and then hopefully a good minor breakdown at his therapists office will get rid of the urge. 

“Okay.” Even if the urge doesn’t go away and he lets it happen, he can’t go for his arms. People will see that, especially since his boss and Foreman are probably going to be watching for the signs they all know to watch for.

\--------------------------------------------

After House is satisfied that he’s not actually on drugs he shouldn’t be on again, Chase heads to his appointment on the other side of town with a short detour to the weird storage room to attempt to not break down. Slamming his fist into the top of his thigh where he knows there’s already a decent bruise from the other day seems to help, but not nearly enough. 

It’s not the same feeling as anxiety, this is entirely the worst traits of his specific brand of depression amplified by the fact that he’s refusing to deal with anything right now. Chase knows that it's his own damn fault that his life has decided to fall apart but all that does is make the hatred for himself currently burning through his veins, worse. 

“So, what happened?” Kevin isn't judgmental, and he doesn’t look upset when he asks. Chase thinks that's what makes him a decent therapist. 

“Can we just get the fact that I’m an idiot out of the way?” Chase is staring at his hands, picking at the edge of his shirt sleeve. He half wishes he’d taken the stress ball out of the diagnostics office to have something to mess with. “I’m off my lithium, I have been for about 2 months or so, I also stopped taking my antidepressants. I know, I’m fucking stupid.” 

“Okay...two things real quick. One, the amount of self depreciation that's making it through your admittedly impressive mask is concerning me. Two,I know something else is going on, what is it?” Kevin isn’t taking notes or anything, and he looks legitimately concerned. 

“The...day before yesterday, my wife walked out on me. She said I was toxic and ruined and I know that I’m a terrible person, and that’s fine, but...it’s my fault she’s gone.” He keeps picking at his sleeve, trying to not let the onslaught of emotions overwhelm him. He hasn’t let himself even seriously think about it since he’d half destroyed his living room. “And before you ask...I’ve been hitting myself again lately but it hasn’t gone any further than that.”

“Good, because that was definitely going to be my next question. I’m guessing that you telling me you stopped taking your medications months ago is you saying you want to get back on them?” The last time he’d gone off of his Lithium he’d had a different therapist, one who he didn’t get along with nearly as well. 

“That's the plan. I might be a dumb ass but I do know that I function better while medicated than not. My life has been trying to fall apart for months now and honestly...I’m surprised it hasn’t been worse.” Chase pauses for a moment, knowing that the biggest issue is that he really needs to mention his potential Lithium toxicity that had been a big part of why he’d stopped taking it. “Uhm...I think it might be time to try and figure out a different mood stabilizer? Or...do like a low dose of lithium and add something else.” There, he’s brought it up.

Chase leaves the office over an hour later after meeting with Putman and getting a new prescription for a starting dose level of lithium. He has to start taking the Prozac again, he’s depressed enough as it is and adding in the adjustment phase, it’s only bound to get worse. It’s a damn good thing that he knows what the doctor wants to hear, Chase knows that if he truly broke down in the office, it would have been a much harder argument to have. He sends House a text saying he’s heading home since it’s almost the end of the day anyways, and to have someone call him if he’s needed. He sends a second text to Foreman saying he’s fine tonight but tomorrow after work he might need to take him up on his offer of sleeping on his couch for a few days. 

It’s nice to know that he’s back on the path toward having a lid on his shit again, but there’s that wonderful internal thought process telling him that it’s never going to get better. Chase goes to sleep rather than let it run away again and risk the urge to cut coming back as strongly as it had been earlier. 


End file.
